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DI8COVRISE 



OF 



NATURAL THEOLOGY, 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE AND THE ADVANTAGES 
OF THE STUDY. 



BY 



HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, F.R. S., 

AND MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
CAREY, LEA & BliAXCHARD. 

1835. 






By Transfer 

0. C. Public Library 

^UN 7 1938 



GRIGGS & CO., PRINTEaS. 



7 ) 



/ 



withl::awn 




CO]\TE]\TS. 





Page 


Jedication 


5 


Introduction — Arrangement of Subjects and Explana- 




tion of Terms 


9 


Analysis of the Work . • . 


13 



PART I. 

XATURE OP THE SCIENCE AND OF ITS EVIDENCES. 

Section I. — Introductory View of the Method of Investi- 
gation pursued in the Physical and Psychological 
Sciences 15 

Section II.— Comparison of the Physical Branch of Na- 
tural Theology with Physics .... 22 

Section III. — Comparison of the Psychological Branch 

of Natural Theology with Psychology ... 36 

Section IV. — Gf the Argument a priori ... 54 

Section V. — Moral or Ethical Branch of Natural The- 
ology . . • . 64 

Section VL — Lord Bacon's Doctrine of Final Causes • 88 

Section VII. — Of Scientific Arrangement, and the Me- 
thods of Analysis and Synthesis .... 96 



IV CONTENTS. 



PART IL 

OF THE ADVANTAGES OP THE STUDY OF NATURAL THEOLOGY 

Page 

Section! — Of the Pleasures of Science . . . 109 
Section II.— Of the Pleasure and Improvement peculiar 

to Natural Theology . . . . . .116 

Section III.— Of the Connexion between Natural and 

Revealed Religion • 123 



NOTES. 

Note I. — Of the Classification of the Sciences . . 135 
II.— Of the Psychological Argument from Final 

Causes , , . . . . 138 
HI.— Of the Doctrine of Cause and Efiect . .142 
IV,— Of the " Systeme de la Nature," and the Hy- 
pothesis of Materialism . . . 146 
v.— Of Mr. Hume's Skeptical Writings, and the 

Argument respecting Providence . 157 

VI. — Of the Ancient Doctrine respecting Mind . 168 
VII. — Of the Ancient Doctrine respecting the Deity 

and Matter . . . . " . .170 
^ VIIL— Of the ancient Doctrine of the Immortality of 

the Soul 174 

.IX. — Of Bishop Warburton's Theory concerning 

the Ancient Doctrine of a Future State 180 
X.— Of Lord Bacon's Character . ... 190 



A DISCOURSE 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



TO 

JOHN CHARLES EARL SPENCER. 



• The composition of this Discourse was un^ 
dertaken in consequence of an observation 
which I had often made, that scientific men 
were apt to regard the study of Natural Reli- 
gion as. little connected with philosophical pur- 
suits. Many of the persons to whom I allude^ 
were men of religious habits of thinking; others 
were free from any disposition towards skepti- 
cism, rather because tfiey had not nujch dis- 
cussed the subject, than becaui?e they had 
formed fixed opinions upon it after inquiry. 
But the bulk of them relied little upon Natural 
Theology, which they seemed to regard as a 
speculation built rather on fancy than on argu- 
ment; or, at any rate, as a kind of knowledge 
quite diiferent from either physical or moral 
science. It therefore appeared to me desirable 
to define, more precisely than had yet been 
done, the place and the claims of Natural Theo- 



VI 



logy among the various branches of human 
knowledge. 

About the same time, our Society,^ as you 
may recollect, was strongly urged to publish an 
edition of Dr. Paley^s popular work, with co- 
pious and scientific illustrations. We both fa- 
voured this plan; but some of our colleagues 
justly apprehended that the adoption of it might 
open the door to the introduction of religious 
controversy among us, against our fundamental 
principles; and the scheme was abandoned. I 
regarded it, however, as expedient to *carry 
this plan into executiDn by individual exertion; 
and our worthy and accomplished colleague, 
Sir C, Bell — whose admirable treatise on Ani- 
mal Mechanics pointed him out as the fellow- 
labourer I should most desire — fortunately 
agreed to share the work of the illustrations. 
In these we have made a very considerable pro- 
gress; and I now inscribe this publication, but 
particularly the Preliminary Discourse, to you. 
It was, with the exception of the Third Section 
. of Part I., and the greater portion of the Notes, 
written at the end of 1830, in 1831, and the 
latter part of 1833, and a portion was added in 
the autijmn of 1834. In those days I held the 
Great Seal of this kingdom; and it was impossi- 
ble to finish the work while many cares of ano- 
ther kind pressed upon me. But the first lei- 
sure that could be obtained w^as devoted to this 
object, and to a careful revision of what had 
been written in a season less auspicious for such 
speculations. 

* For the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 



vu 



I inscribe the fruits of those studies to you, 
not merely as a token of ancient friendship — 
for that you do not require; nor because I al- 
ways have found you, whether in possession or 
in resistance of power, a fellows-labourer to 
maintain our common principles, alike firm, 
faithful, disinterested — for your known public 
character wants no testimony from me; nor yet 
because a work on such a subject needs the pa- 
tronage of a great name — for it would be affec- 
tation in me to pretend any such motive; but 
because you have devoted much of your time 
to such inquiries — are beyond most men sensi- 
ble of their importance — "Concur generally in 
the opinions which I profess to maintain — and 
had even formed the design of giving to the 
world your thoughts upon the subject, as I hope 
and trust .you now will be moved to do all the 
more for the present address. In this view, 
your authority will prove of great value to the 
cause of truth, however superfluous the patron- 
age of even your name might be to recommend 
the most important of all studies. 

Had our lamented friend Romilly lived, you 
are aware that not even these .considerations 
would have made me address any one but him, 
with whom I had oftentimes speculated upon 
this ground. Both of us have been visited 
with the most severe afflictions, of a far nearer 
and more lasting kind than even his removal, 
and we are now left with few things to care 
for; yet, ever since the time I followed him to 
the grave, I question if either of us has read, 
without meditating upon the irreparable loss 



VIU 



we and all men then sustained, the words of 
the ancient philosopher best imbued with reli- 
gious opinions — ^^ Proficiscar enim non ad eos 
solum viros de quihus ante dixi, sed etiam ad 
Catonem meum, quo nemo vir melior natus est, 
nemo pietate prsestantior; cujus a me corpus 
crematum est, animus vero non me deserens sed 
respectans, in ea profecto loca discessit quo 
mihi ipsi cernebat esse veniendum; quern ego 
meiim casum fortiter ferre visus sum^ non quod 
8equo animo ferrem; sed me ipse consolabar, 
existimans, non longinquum inter nos dignessum 
et discessum fore/^* 

* De Senect, 



INTRODUCTION. 



ARRAN'GEMENT OF SUBJECTS AND EXPLANATION OF TERMS. 

The words Theology and Religion .are often used 
as synonymous. Thus, iVia/t^rr// Theology and Natu- 
ral Religion are by many confounded together. But 
the more accurate use of the words is that which 
makes Theology the science, and Religion its subject; 
and in this manner are they distinguished when we 
speak of a "professor of theology/^ and a "sense. of 
reh'gion.^' 

There is, however, as regards Natural Theology^ 
a more limited use of the word, which confines it to 
the knowledge and attributes of the Deity, and regards 
the speculation concerning his will, and our own 
hopes from and duties towards him, as another branch 
of the science, termed Natural Religion^ in contra- 
distinction to the former. Dr. Paley hardly touches 
on this latter branch in his book, there being only 
about one-sixtieth part devoted to it, and that inciden- 
tally in treating of the attributes. Indeed, though in 
the dedication he uses the word Religion as synony- 
mous with Theology, the title and the arrangement 
of his discourse show that he generally employed the 
term Natural Theology in its restricted sense. Bi- 
shop Butler, on the other hand, seems to have used 
Natural Religion in a sense equally restricted, but 
certainly little warranted by custom; for that portion 
of his work which treats of Natural Religion is con- 
tined to a future state and the moral government of 
God, as if he either held Natural Religion and Natu- 
ral Theology to be two branches of one subject, or 
Natural Religion to be a branch of Natural Theolo- ' 

2 



10 

gy. The older writers, Clarke, Bentley, Derham^ 
seem to have sometimes used the words indifferent- 
ly, but never to have regarded Natural Religion in 
the restricted acceptation. The ancients generally 
used Religion in a qualified sense, either as connected 
with an obligation, or as synonymous with supersti- 
tion. 

This Discourse is not a treatise of Natural The- 
ology: it has not for its design an exposition of the 
doctrines whereof Natural Theology consists. But 
its object is, first, to explain the nature of the evidence 
upon which it rests — to show that it is a science, the 
truths of which are discovered by induction, like the 
truths of Natural and Moral Philosophy — that it is a 
branch of science partaking of the nature of each of 
those great divisions of human knowledge, and not 
merely closely allied to them both. Secondly, the 
object of the Discourse is to explain the advantages 
attending this study. The work, therefore, is a Lo- 
gical one. 

We have commented upon the use of the terms 
Theology and Religion. As it is highly desirable to 
keep scientific language precise, and always to use 
the same terms in the same sense, we shall now fur- 
ther observe upon the word " moraV^ in relation to 
science or faculties. It is sometimes used to denote 
the whole of our mental faculties, and in opposition to 
natural and physical, as when we speak of " moral 
science j'^^ "moral truths f^ ''moral philosophy.-^ 
But it is also used in contradistinction to "intellec- 
iual" or " mental,^^ and in connexion with or in re- 
ference to obligation; and then it relates to rights and 
' duties, and is synonymous with ethical. It seems 
advisable to use it always in this. sense, and to em- 
ploy the words spiritual and mental in opposition 
to natural and material; and psychological, as ap- 
plied to the science of mind, in opposition to physi- 
cal. Again, a distinction is sometimes made between 
the intellectual and moral powers or faculties^ — the 



11 

former being directly those of the understanding, the 
latter those of the will, or, as they are often called, 
the "active power s^^'^ — that is, the passions and feel- 
ings. It seems better to use the word active for this 
purpose as opposed to intellectual. Thus, we shall 
have these general terms,, spiritual or mental^ as ap- 
plied to the immaterial part of the creation, ^wA. psy- 
chological^ as applied to the science which treats of 
it. We shall next have a subdivision of the mental 
faculties into intellectual and active; both form the 
subjects oi psychological science. Moral science, in 
its restricted sense, and properly so called, will then 
denote that branch which treats of duties, and of what 
is implied in those duties, their correlative rights; it 
will, in short, be ethical science. 

Thus, the science of mind — say Metaphysical 
science — may be said to consist of two great branches, 
the one of which treats of existences, the other of du- 
ties. The one accordingly has been termed, with 
great accuracy. Ontology^ speaking of that w^hich is; 
the other, Deontology, speaking of that which ought 
to be. The former, however, comprehends properly^ 
all physical, as well as menial science. The division 
which appears upon the whole most convenient is this: 
That metaphysical science, as contradistinguished 
from physical, is either psychological^ which treats 
of the faculties both intellectual and active, but treats 
of existences only; or tnoral, which treats of rights 
and duties, and is distinguishable from psychological, 
though plainly connected with it nearly as corollaries 
are with the propositions from whence they flow. 
Then physical truths, in one respect, come under the 
same head with the first branch of metaphysical truths. 
Physical as well as psychological science treats of ex- 
istences, while moral science alone treats of duties. 

According to a like arrangement. Natural Theolo- 
gy consists of two great branches, one resembling 
Ontology, the other analogous to Deontology, The 
former comprehends the discovery of the existence 



12 

and attributes of a Creator, by investigating the evi-^ 
dences of design in tlie works of the creation, mate- 
rial as well as spiritual. The latter relates to the dis- 
covery of his will and probable intentions with regard 
to his creatures, their conduct, and their duty. The 
former resembles the phy^sical and psychological 
sciences, and treats of the evidences of design, wisdom, 
and goodness exhibited both in the natural and spiri- 
tual worlds. The latter resembles rather the depart- 
ment of moral science, as distinguished from both 
physical and psychological. We may thus consider 
the science of Natural Theology as consisting, like 
all inductive science, of three compartments, Natural, 
Mental, and Moral; or, taking tho Greek terms, Phy- 
sical, Psychological, and Ethical. 

This classification is convenient, and its grounds 
are very fit to be premised — at the same time that 
we must admit the question to be one only of class- 
ification and technology. Having so stated the divi- 
sions of the subject and the meaning of the terms 
used in relation to those divisions, I shall assume this 
arrangement and adhere to this phraseology, as con- 
venient, though far from representing it to be the 
best. In such discussions it is far more important to 
employ one uniform and previously explained language 
or arrangement, than to be very curious in adopt- 
ing the* best. No classification, indeed, can, from the 
nature of things, be rigorously exact. All the branches 
of science, even of natural philosophy, much more of 
metaphysical, run into each other, and are separated 
by gradations rather than by lines of demarcation. 
Nor could any scientific language we possess help 
breaking down under us in an attempt to maintain a 
perfectly logical arrangement.* 

* Note I, 



13 



ANALYSES OF THE WORK. 



The order of this Discourse is thus set out: 

The First Part treats of the nature of the sub- 
ject, and the kind of evidence upon which Natural 
Theology rests. 

The Second Part treats of the advantages de- 
rived from the study of the science. 

The former part is divided into seven sections. The 
Jirst is introductory, and treats of the kind of evidence 
by which the truths of Physical and Psychological 
science are investigated, and shows that there is as 
great an appearance of diversity between the manner 
in which we arrive at the knowledge of different 
truths in those inductive sciences, as there is between 
the nature of any such inductive investigation, and 
the proofs of the ontological branches of Natural The- 
ology. But that diversity is proved to be only ap- 
parent; and hence it is inferred, that the supposed dif- 
ference of the proofs of Natural Theology may also be 
only apparent. 

The second section continues the application of this 
argument to the Physical branch of Natural Theolo- 
gy, and shows further proofs that the first branch of 
Natural Theology is as much an inductive science, 
as Physics or Natural Philosophy. The first section 
compared the ontological branches of Natural Theo- 
logy with all inductive science, physical as well as 
psychological. The second compares the physical 
branch of Natural Theology with physical science 
only. 

The third section compares the psychological 
branch of Natural Theology with psychological 
science, and shows that both rest alike upon induc- 
tion. 

The fourth section shows that the argumentum h 
priori is unsound in a great degree — that it is in- * 
sufficient for the purpose to which it is applied — »that 
it serves only to a limited extent — and that to this 

# 



14 

extent it is in reality not distinguishable from induc- 
tion, or the argumeiitum a posteriori. 

The fifth section treats of the second or Moral, the 
deontological branch of Natural Theology, and shows 
that it rests upon the same kind of evidence with mo- 
ral science, and is, strictly speaking, as much a branch 
of inductive knowledge. 

The sixth section examines the doctrines of Lord 
Bacon respecting Final Causes, and shows that he 
was not adverse to the speculation when kept within 
due bounds. 

The seventh section examines the true nature of 
inductive analysis and synthesis, and shows some im- 
portant errors prevailing on this subject. 

In treating of the proofs of design displayed by the 
mental constitution of living creatures, and in treat- 
ing of the SouFs Immortality, it becomes necessary 
to enter more at large into the subject, and therefore, 
the third SiXid the fifth sections are not, like the others, 
mere logical discourses in which the doctrines of Na- 
tural Theology are assumed rather than explained. 
The subjects of those two sections have not been suf- 
ficiently handled in professed treatises upon Natu- 
ral Theology, which have been almost wholly eon- 
fined to the first branch of the science — the proofs of 
the Deity's existence and attributes — and to the phy- 
sical portion of that branch. This defect I have en- 
deavoured to supply. 



The Second Part, which treats of the advantages of 
the study, consists of three sections. 

The first shows that the precise kind of pleasure 
derived from the investigation of scientific truths is 
derived from this study. 

The second treats of the pleasures which are pecu- 
liar to this study. 

The third treats of the connexion of Natural with 
Revealed Religion. 



15 



PART THE FIRST. 

NATURE OF THE SCIENCE, AND OF ITS EVIDENCES. 

SECTION I. 

INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE METHOD OF INVESTIGA- 
TION PURSUED IN THE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGI- 
CAL SCIENCES. 

The faculties, as well as the feelings of the human 
mind, its intellectual, as well as its active powers, are 
employed without any intermission, although with 
varying degrees of exertion, in one of two ways — ei- 
ther in regard to some object immediately connected 
with the supply of our wants, or in regard to subjects 
of mere contemplation. The first class of exertions 
relates to all the objects of necessity, of comfort, or 
of physical enjoyment: in the pursuit of these, the 
powers of the understanding, or the passions, or both 
together, are with nearly the whole of mankind em- 
ployed during the greater portion of their existence, 
and with the bulk of mankind, during almost the 
whole of their existence. The other class of mental 
exertions, which engrosses but a very few men for 
the greater part of their lives, and occupies the ma- 
jority only occasionally and at considerable intervals, 
comprehends within its scope all the subjects of medi- 
tation and reflection — of merely speculative reason- 
ing and discussion: it is composed of all the efforts 
which our understanding can make, and all the de- 
sires which we can feel upon subjects of mere science 
or taste, matters which begin and end in intellectual 
or moral gratification. 



16 

It is unquestionably true that these two grand 
branches of exertion have an intimate connexion with 
each other. The pursuits of science lend constant as- 
sistance to those of active life; and the practical ex- 
ercise of the mental powers constantly furthers the 
progress of science merely speculative. But the two 
provinces are nevertheless perfectly distinguishable, 
and ought not to be confounded. The corollary from 
a scientific discovery may be the improvement of a 
very ordinary machine or a common w^orking tool; 
yet the establishment of the speculative truth may 
have been the primary object of the philosopher who 
discovered it; and to learn that truth is the immediate 
purpose of him who studies the philosopher's system. 
So, the better regulation of the affections or the more 
entire control of the passions, may be the result of an 
acquaintance of our mental constitution; but the ob- 
ject of him who studies the laws of. mind is merely to 
become acquainted with the spiritual part of our 
nature. In like manner, it is very possible that 
the knowledge of a scientific truth may force itself 
upon one whose faculties or feelings are primarily en- 
gaged in some active exertion. Some physical law, 
or some psychological truth, may be discovered by 
one only intent upon supplying a physical want, or 
obtaining a mental enjoyment. But here, as in the 
former case, the scientific or speculative object is in- 
cidental to the main pursuit: the matter of contem- 
plation is the corollary, the matter of action the pro- 
position. 

The merely contemplative pursuits, which thus fornn 
one of the great branches of mental exertion, seem 
again to be divisible into two classes, by a line that, to 
a careless observer, appears sufficiently defined. The 
objects of our inquiry and meditation appear to be ei- 
ther those things in the physical and spiritual worlds, 
with which we are conversant through our senses, or 
by means of our internal consciousness ; or those things 
with which we are^made acquainted only by reasoning 
— by the evidence of things unseen and unfelt. We 



17 

either discuss the properties and relations of actually 
perceived and conceived beings, physical and mental 
— that is, the objects of sense and of consciousness — or 
we carry our inquiries beyond those things which we 
see and feel ; we investigate the origin of them and of 
ourselves ; we rise from the contemplation of nature 
and of the spirit within us, to the first cause of all, 
both of body and of mind. To the one class of specu- 
lation belong the inquiries how matter and mind are 
framed, and how they act; to the other class be- 
long the inquiries whence they proceed, and whither 
they tend. In a word, the structure and relations of 
the universe form the subject of the one branch of phi- 
losophy, and may be termed Human Science; the origin 
and destiny of the universe forms the subject of its other 
branch, and is termed Divine Science^ or Theology. 

It is not to be denied that this classification may be 
convenient ; indeed, it rests upon some real foundation, 
for the speculations which compose these two branches 
have certain common differences and common re- 
semblances. Yet it is equally certain, that nothing 
but an imperfect knowledge of the subject, or a super- 
ficial attention to it, can permit us to think that there 
is any well-defined boundary which separates the two 
kinds of philosophy ; that the methods of investigation 
are different in each; and that the kind of evidence 
varies by which the truths of the one and of the other 
class are demonstrated. The error is far more exten- 
sive in its consequences than a mere inaccuracy of 
classification, for it materially impairs the force of the 
proofs upon which Natural Theology rests. The pro- 
position which we would place in its stead is. That this 
science is strictly a branch of inductive philosophy, 
formed and supported by the same kind of reasoning 
upon which the Physical and Psychological sciences 
are founded. This important point will be established 
by a fuller explanation ; and we shall best set about 
this task by showing, in the first place, that the same 
apparent diversity of evidence exists in the different 
subjects or departments of the branch which we have 



18 

termed Human science. It seems to exist there on a 
superficial examinations if a closer scrutiny puts that 
appearance to flight, the interference is legitimate, 
that there may be no better ground for admitting an 
essential difference between the foundations of Human 
Science and Divine. 

The careless inquirer into physical truth would cer- 
tainly think he had seized on a sound principle of clas- 
sification, if he should divide the objects with which 
philosophy. Natural and Mental, is conversant, into 
two classes — those objects of which we know the exis- 
tence by our senses or our consciousness; that is, ex- 
ternal objects which we see, touch, taste, and smell, 
internal ideas which we conceive or remember, or emo- 
tions which we feel — and those objects of which we 
only know the existence by a process of reasoning, 
founded upon something originally presented by the 
senses or by consciousness. This superficial reasoner 
would range under the first of these heads the mem- 
bers of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms ; 
the heavenly bodies ; the mind — for we are supposing 
him to be so far capable of reflection, as to know that 
the proof of the mind's separate existence is, at the 
least, as short, plain, and direct, as that of the body, or 
of external objects. Under the second head he would 
range generally whatever objects of examination are 
not directly perceived by the senses, or felt by con^ 
sciousness. 

But a moment's reflection will show both how very 
short a way this classification would carry our inaccu- 
rate logician, and how entirely his principle fails to 
support him even during that little part of the jour- 
ney. Thus, the examination of certain visible objects 
and appearances enables us to ascertain the laws of 
light and of vision. Our senses teach us that colours 
diflfer, and that their mixture forms other hues; that 
their absence is black, their combination in certain 
proportions white. We are in the same way enabled 
to understand that the organ of vision performs its 
functions by a natural apparatus resembling, though 



19 

far surpassing, certain instruments of our own con- 
structing, and that therefore it works on the same prin- 
ciples. But that light, which can be perceived directly 
by none of our senses, exists, as a separate body, we 
only infer by a process of reasoning from things which 
our senses do perceive. So we are acquainted with 
the effects of heat ; we know that it extends the di- 
mensions of whatever matter it penetrates; we feel its 
effects upon our own nerves when subjected to its ope- 
ration; and we see its effects in augmenting, liquefy- 
ing, and decomposing other bodies ; but its existence as 
a separate substance we do not know, except by rea- 
soning and by analogy. Again, to which of the two 
classes must w^e refer the air? Its existence is not 
made known by the sight, the smell, the taste ; but is 
it by the touch? Assuredly a stream of it blown upon 
the nerves of touch produces a certain effect; but to 
infer from thence the existence of a rare, light, invisi- 
ble, and impalpable fluid, is clearly an operation of 
reasoning, as much as that which enables us to infer 
the existence of light or heat from their perceptible 
effects. But furthermore, we are accustomed to speak 
of seeing motion ; and the reasoner whom we are sup- 
posing would certainly class the phenomena of me- 
chanics, and possibly of dynamics generally, including 
astronomy, under his first head, of things known imme- 
diately by the senses. Yet assuredly nothing can be 
more certain thari that the knowledge of motion is a 
deduction of reasoning, not a perception of sense ; it is 
derived from the comparison of two positions; the idea 
of a change of place is the result of that comparison 
attained by a short process of reasoning ; and the esti- 
mate of velocity is the result of another process of rea- 
soning and of recollection. Thus, then, there is at 
once excluded from the first class almost the whole 
range of natural philosophy. But are we quite sure 
that any thing remains which when severely exa- 
mined will stand the test? Let us attend a little more 
closely to the things which we have passed over hastily, 
as if admitting that they belonged to the first class. 



20 

It is said that we do not see light, and we certainly 
can know its existence directly by no other sense 
but that of sight, but that we see objects variously il- 
luminated, and therefore that the existence of light 
is an inference of reason, and the diversity of colour 
an object of sense. But the very idea of diversity 
implies reasoning, for it is the result of a comparison, 
and when we affirm that white light is composed of 
the seven primary colours in certain proportions, we 
state a proposition which is the result of much reason- 
ing — reasoning, it is true, founded upon sensations 
or impressions upon the senses; but not less founded 
upon such sensations is the reasoning which makes 
us believe in the existence of a body called light 
The same may be said of heat, and the phenomena 'of 
heated bodies. The existence of heat is an inference 
from certain phenomena, that is, certain effects pro- 
duced on our external senses by certain bodies or 
certain changes which those senses undergo in the 
neighbourhood of those bodies; but it is not more an 
inference of reason than the proposition that heat ex- 
tends or liquefies bodies; for that is merely a conclu- 
sion drawn from comparing our sensations occasioned 
by the external objects placed in varying circum- 
stances. 

But can we say that there is no process of reasoning 
even in the simplest case which we have supposed 
our reasoner to put — the existence of the three king- 
doms, of nature, of the heavenly bodies, of the mind? 
It is certain that there is in every one of these cases 
a process of reasoning. A certain sensation is ex- 
cited in the mind through the sense of vision; it is an 
inference of reason that this must have been excited 
by something, or must have had a cause. That the 
cause must have bqen external, may possibly be 
allowed to be another inference which reason could 
make unaided by the evidence of anj^ other sense. 
But to discover that the cause was at any the least 
distance from the organ of vision, clearly required a 



21 

n«w process of reasoning, considerable experience, 
and the indications of other senses; for the young; 
man whom Mr. Cheselden couched for a cataract, at 
first believed that every thing he saw touched his eye. 
Experience and reasoning, therefore, are required to 
teach us the existence of external objects; and all that 
relates to their relations of size, colour, motion, habits, 
in a word, the whole philosophy of them, must of 
course be the result of still longer and more compli- 
cated processes of reasoning. So of the existence of 
the mind: although undoubtedly the process of rea- 
soning is here the shortest of all, and the least liable 
to deception, yet so connected are all its phenomena 
with those of the body, that it requires a process of 
abstraction alien from the ordinary habits of most 
men, to be persuaded that we have a more undeniable 
evidence of its separate existence than we even have 
of the separate existence of the body. 

It thus clearly appears that w^e have been justified 
in calling the classifier whose case we have been sup- 
posing, a careless inquirer, a superficial reasoner, an 
imperfect logician; that there is no real foundation 
for the distinction which we have supposed him to take 
between the different objects of scientific investigation; 
that the evidence upon which our assent to both classes 
of truths reposes is of the same kind, namely, the 
inferences drawn by reasoning from sensations or 
ideas, originally presented by the external senses or 
by our inward consciousness. 

If, then, the distinction which at first appeared 
solid, is found to be without any warrant in the dif- 
ferent kinds of Human Science, has it any better 
grounds when we apply it to draw the line between 
that branch of philosophy itself, and the other which 
has been termed Divine, or Theology? In other 
words, is there any real, any specific difference be- 
tween the method of investigation, the nature of the 
evidence, in the two departments of speculation? Al- 
though this Preliminary Discourse, and indeed the 

3 



22 

work itself which it introduces, and all the illustrations 
of it, are calculated throughout to furnish the answer 
to the question, we shall yet add a few particulars in 
this place, in order to show how precisely the same 
fallacy which we have been exposing, in regard to 
the classification of objects in ordinary scientific re- 
scearch, gives rise to the more general classification 
or separation of all science into two distinct branches, 
Human and Divine, and how erroneous it is to sup- 
pose that these two branches rest upon different foun- 
dations. 



SECTION II. 

COMPARISON OF THE PHYSICAL BRANCH OF NATURAL 
THEOLOGY WITH PHYSICKS. 

The. two inquiries — that into the nature and consti- 
tution of the universe, and that into the evidence of 
design which it displays — in a word, physics and 
psychology, philosophy whether natural or mental, 
and the fundamental branch of Natural Theology, — 
are not only closely allied one to the other, but are to 
a very considerable extent identical. The two paths 
of investigation for a great part of the way completely 
coincide. The same induction of facts which leads 
us to a knowledge of the structure of the eye, and its 
functions in the animal economy, leads us to the know- 
ledge of its adaptation to the properties of light. It 
is a truth of physics, in the strictest sense of the word, 
that vision is perform.ed by the eye refracting light, 
and making it converge to a focus upon the retina; 
and that the peculiar combination of its lenses, and 
the different materials they are composed of, correct 
the indistinctness which would otherwise arise from 
the different refrangibility of lightj in other words, 



23 

make the eye an achromatic instrument. But if this 
is not also a truth in Natural Theology, it is a posi- 
tion from which, by the shortest possible process of 
reasoning, we arrive at a Theological truth — namely, 
that the instrument so successfully performing a given 
service by means of this curious structure, must have 
been formed with a knowledge of the properties of 
light. The position from which so easy a step brings 
us to this doctrine of Natural Theology was gained 
by strict induction. Upon the same evidence which 
all natural science rests on, reposes the knowledge 
that the eye is an optical instrument: this is a truth 
common to both Physics and Theology. Before the 
days of Sir Isaac Newton, men knew that they saw 
by means of the eye, and that the eye was construct- 
ed upon optical principles; but the reason of its pe- 
culiar conformation they knew not, because they were 
ignorant of the different refrangibility of light. When 
his discoveries taught this truth, it was found to have 
been acted upon, and consequently known, by the 
Being who created the eye. Still our knowledge 
was imperfect; and it was reserved for Mr. Dollond 
to discover another law of nature — the different dis- 
persive powers of different substances — which enabled 
him to compound an object-glass that more effectually 
corrected the various refrangibility of the rays. It 
was now observed that this truth also must have been 
known to the maker of the eye; for upon its basis is 
that instrument, far more perfect than the achromatic 
glass of Dollond, framed. These things are truths in 
both physics and theology; they are truths taught us 
by the self-same process of investigation, and resting 
upon the self-same kind of evidence. 

When we extend our inquiries, and observe the 
varieties of this perfect instrument, we mark the adap- 
tation of changes to the diversity of circumstances; 
and the truths thus learnt are in like manner common 
to Physical and Theological science; that is, to Na- 
tural History, or Comparative Anatomy, and Natural 
Theology. 



24 

That beautiful instrument, so artistly contrived that 
the most ingenious workman could not imagine an 
improvement of it, becomes still more interesting and 
more wonderful, when we find that its conformation 
is varied with the different necessities of each animal. 
If the animal prowls by night, w^e see the opening of 
the pupil, and the power of concentration in the eye 
increased. If an amphibious animal has occasionally 
to dive into the water, with the change of the medium 
through which the rays pass, there is an accommoda- 
tion in the condition of the humours, and the eye par- 
takes of the eye both of the quadruped and the fish. 

So, having contemplated the apparatus for protec- 
tion in the human eye, we find that in the lower ani- 
mals, who want both the accessory means of cleaning 
the eye and the ingenuity to accomplish it by other 
modes than the eyelids, an additional eyelid, a new 
apparatus, is provided for this purpose. 

Again, in fishes, whose eye is washed by the ele- 
ment in which they move, all the exterior apparatus 
is unnecessary, and is dismissed; but in the crab, and 
especially in that species which lies in mud, the very 
peculiar and horny prominent eye, which every body 
must have observed, would be quite obscured were it 
not for a particular provision. There is a little brush 
of hair above the eye, against which the eye is occa- 
sionally raised to wipe off what may adhere to it. The 
form of the eye, the particular mode in which it is 
moved, and, we m.ay say, the coarseness of the instru- 
ment compared with the parts of the same organ irr 
the higher class of animals, make the mechanism of 
eyelids and of lachrymal glands unsuitable. The 
mechanism, used for this purpose is discovered by 
observation and reasoning; that it is contrived for this 
purpose is equally a discovery of observation and rea- 
soning. Both propositions are strictly propositions 
of physical science. 

The same remarks apply to every part of the ani- 
mal body. The use to which each member is subser- 



25 

vient, and the manner in which it is enabled so to 
perform its functions as to serve that appointed use, 
is learnt by an induction of the strictest kind. But 
it is impossible to deny, that what induction thus 
teaches forms the great bulk of all Natural Theology. 
The question which the theologian always puts upon 
each discovery of a purpose manifestly accomplished 
is this: "Suppose I had this operation to perform by 
mechanical means, and were acquainted with the laws 
regulating the action of matter, should I attempt it in 
any other way than I here see practised?'^ If the an- 
swer is in the negative, the consequence iS irresistible 
that some power, capable of acting with design, and 
possessing the supposed knowledge, employed the 
means which we see used. But this negative answer 
is the result of reasoning founded upon induction, and 
rests upon the same evidence whereon the doctrines 
of all physical science are discovered and believed. 
And the inference to w^hich that negative answer so 
inevitably leads is a truth in Natural Theology; for it 
is only another way of asserting that design and know- 
ledge are evinced in the works and functions of nature. 
It may further illustrate the argument to take one or 
two other examples. When a bird\s egg is examined, 
it is found to consist of three parts; the chick, the yelk 
in which the chick is placed, and the white in which 
the yelk swims. The yelk is lighter than the white; 
and it is attached to it at two points, joined by a line 
or rather plane, below the centre of gravity of the 
yelk. From this arrangement, it must follow that the 
chick is always uppermost, roll the egg how you 
will; consequently, the chick is always kept nearest 
to the breast or belly of the mother while she is sitting. 
Suppose, then, that any one acquainted with the laws 
of motion had to contrive things so as to secure this po- 
sition for the little speck or sac in question, in order 
to its receiving the necessary heat from the hen — 
could he proceed otherwise than by placing it in the 
lighter liquid, and suspending that liquid in the hea- 

3^ 



26 

vier, so that its centre of gravity should be abore 
the line or plane of suspension? Assuredly not; for 
in no other way could his purpose be accomplished. 
This position is attained by a strict induction; it is 
supported by the same kind of evidence on which all 
ph3^sical truths i-est. But it leads, by a single step, to 
another truth in Natural Theology; that the egg must 
have been formed by some hand skilful in mechanism, 
and acting under the knowledge of dynamics. The 
forms of the bones and joints, and the tendons or cords 
which play over them, afford a variety of instances of 
the most perfect mechanical adjustment. Sometimes 
the power is sacrificed for rapidity of motion, and 
sometimes rapidity is sacrificed for power. Our knee- 
pan, or patella, throws off the tendon which is at- 
tached to it from the centre of motion, and therefore 
adds to the power of the muscles of the thigh, which 
enable us to rise or to leap. We«have a mechanism of 
precisely the wsamekind in the lesser joints, where the 
bones, answering the purposes of the patella, are 
formed of a diminutive size.^ In the toes of the os- 
trich, the material is different, but the mechanism is 
the same. An elastic cushion is placed between th-e 
tendon and the joint, which, whilst it throws off the 
tendon from the centre of motion, and therefore adds 
to the power of the flexor muscle, gives elasticity to 
the bottom of the foot. And we recognise the inten- 
tion of this when we remember that this bird does 
not fly, but runs with great swiftness, and that the 
whole weight rests upon the foot, which has but little 
relative breadth; these elastic cushions serving, in 
some degree, the same office as the elastic frog of the 
horse's hoof, or the cushion in the bottom of the ca- 
mel's foot. 

The web-foot of the water-fowl is an inimitable 
paddle; and all the ingenuity of the present day ex- 
erted to improve our steam-boats makes nothing to 

* Hence called Sesamoid fram Sesamum^ a kind of grairu 



27 

approach it. The flexor tendon of the toes of the 
duck is so directed over the heads of the bones of 
the thigh and leg, that it is made tight when the crea^ 
ture bends its leg, and is relaxed when the leg is 
stretched out. When the bird draws its foot up, the 
toes are drawn together, in consequence of the bent 
position of the bones of the leg pressing on the tendoo. 
When, on the contrary, it pushes the leg out straight, 
in making the stroke, the tendons are relieved from 
the pressure of the heel-bone, and the toes are per- 
mitted to be fully extended, and at the same time 
expanded, so that the web between them meets the 
resistance of a large volume of water. 

In another class of birds, those which roost upon 
the branch of a tree, the same mechanism answers 
another purpose. The great length of the toes of 
these birds enables them to grasp the branch; yet 
were they supported by voluntary effort alone, and 
w^ere there no other provision made, their grasp would 
relax in sleep. But, on the contrary, we know that 
they roost on one foot, and maintain a firm attitude. 
Borelli has taken pains to explain how this is. The 
muscle which bends the toes lies on the fore part of 
the thigh, and runs oVer the joint w^hich corresponds 
with our knee-joint: from the fore part its tendon 
passes to the back part of the leg, and over the joint 
equivalent to our heel-bone: it then splits, and ex- 
tends in the bottom of the foot to the toes. The con- 
sequence of this'singular course of the tendon is, that 
when the mere weight of the bird causes these two 
joints to bend under it, the tendon is stretched, or 
would be stretched, were it not that its divided ex- 
tremities, inserted into the last bones of the toes, draw 
these toes so that they contract, and grasp the branch 
on which the bird roosts, without any effort whatever 
on its part. 

These are facts learnt by induction ; the inductive 
science of dynamics shows us that such mechanism is 
calculated to answer the end which, in point of fact, i& 



28 

atteined. To conclude from thence that the mechanist 
contrived the means with the intention of producing 
this end, and with the knowledge of the science, is also 
strictly an inference of induction. 

Examine now, in land animals, the structure of the 
larynx, the upper part of which is so contrived as to 
keep the windpipe closely shut hy the valve thrown 
over its orifice, while the food is passing into the sto- 
mach, as it were, over a drawbridge, and, but for that 
valve, would fall into the lungs. No one can hesitate 
in ascribing this curious mechanism to the intention 
that the same opening of the throat and mouth should 
serve for conveying food to the stomach and air to the 
lungs, without any interference of the two operations. 
But that structure would not be sufficient for animals 
which live in the water, and must therefore, while they 
breathe at the surface, carry down their food to de- 
vour it below. In them accordingly, as in the whale 
and the porpoise, we find the valve is not flat, but pro- 
minent and somewhat conical, rising towards the back 
of the nose, and the continuation of the nostril by means 
of a ring (or sphyncter) muscle embraces the top of the 
windpipe so as to complete the communication be- 
tween the lungs and the blow-hole, while it cuts off all 
communication between those lungs and the mouth. 

Again, if we examine the structure of a porpoise's 
head, we find its cavities capable of great distention, 
and such that he can fill them at pleasure with air or 
with water, according as he would mount, float, or sink. 
By closing the blow-hole, he shuts out the water; by 
letting in the water, he can sink; by blowing from 
the lungs against the cavities, he can force out the wa- 
ter, and fill the hollows with air, in order to rise. No 
one can doubt that such facts aflford direct evidence of 
an apt contrivance directed towards a specific object, 
and adopted by some power thoroughly acquainted with 
the laws of hydrostatics, as well as perfectly skilful in ^ 
workmanship. 

To draw an example from a very different source, 



29 

let us observe the structure of the Planetary System, 
There is one particular arrangement which producer 
a certain effect — namely, the stability of the system^ 
— produces it in a manner pecuharly adapted for per- 
petual duration, and produces it through the agency of 
an influence quite universal, pervading all space, and 
equally regulating the motions of the smallest particles 
of* matter and of its most prodigious masses. This ar- 
rangement consists in making the planets move in orbits 
more or less elliptical, but none diflTering materially 
from circles, with the sun near the centre, revolving 
almost in one plane of motion, and moving in the same 
direction — those whose eccentricity is the most consi- 
derable having the smallest masses, and the larger ones 
deviating hardly at all from the circular path. The 
influence of gravitation, which is inseparably connected 
w^ith all matter as far as we know, extends over the 
whole of this system ; so that all those bodies which move 
round the sun — twenty-three planets including their 
satellites, and six or seven comets — are continually act- 
ed upon each by two kinds of force, — the original pro- 
jection which sends them forward, and is accompanied 
with a similar and probably a coeval rotatory motion 
in some of them round their axis, and the attraction 
of each towards every other body, which attraction 
produces three several effects — consolidating the mass 
of each, and, in conjunction with the rotatory motion, 
moulding their forms — retaining each planet in its or- 
bit round the sun, and each satellite in its orbit round 
the planet — altering or disturbing what would be the 
motion of each round the sun, if there were no other 
bodies in the system to attract and disturb. Now it is 
demonstrated by the strictest process of mathematical 
reasoning, that the result of the whole of these mutual 
actions, proceeding from the universal influence of gra- 
vitation, must necessarily, in consequence of the pe- 
culiar arrangement which has been described of the or- 
bits and masses, and in consequence of the law by which 
gravitation acts, produce a constant alteration in the 



30 

orbit of. each body, which alteration goes on for thou- 
sands of years, very slowly making that orbit bulge, as 
it were, until it reaches a certain shape, when the al- 
teration begins to take the opposite direction, and for an 
equal number of years goes on constantly, as it were, 
flattening the orbit, till it reaches a certain shape, when 
it stops, and then the bulging "again begins; and that 
this alternate change of bulging and flattening must 
go on for ever by the same law, without ever exceed- 
ing on either side a certain point. All changes in the 
system are thus periodical, and its perpetual stability 
is completely secured. It is manifest that such an ar- 
rangement, so conducive to such a purpose, and so cer- 
tainly accomplishing that purpose, could only have been 
made with the express design of attaining such an end 
— that some power exists capable of thus producing 
such wonderful order, so marvellous and wholly admi- 
rable a harmony, out of such numberless disturbances — 
and that this power was actuated by the intention of 
producing this effect.* The reasoning upon this sub- 
ject, I have observed, is purely mathematical ; but the 
facts respecting the system on which all the reasoning 
rests are known to us by induction alone: consequent- 
ly, the grand truth respecting the secular disturbance, 
or the periodicity of the changes in the system — that 
discovery which makes the glory of Lagrange and La- 
place, and constitutes the triumph of the Integral Cal- 
culus, whereof it is the fruit, and of the mosf^atient 
course of astronomical observation whereon the analy- 
sis is grounded — may most justly be classed as a truth 
both of the Mixed Mathematics and of Natural Theo- 
logy — for the theologian only adds a single short link 
to the chain of the physical astronomer's demonstra- 
tion in order to reach the great Artificer from the phe- 
nomena of his system. 

* Earum autem perenes cursus atque perpetui cum admirabili in- 
credibilique constantia, declarant in his vim et mentem esse divi- 
nam, ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere, is nihil omni- 
no sensurus esse videatur. Cicero De Nat, Deo. II. 21 . 



31 

But let us examine further this matter. The po- 
sition which we reach by a strict process of induc- 
tion, is common to Natural Philosophy and Natu- 
ral Theology — namely, that a given organ performs 
a given function, or a given arrangement possesses 
a certain stability, by its adaptation to mechanical 
laws. We have said that the process of reasoning 
is short and easy, by which we arrive at the doc- 
trine more pecuhar to Natural Theology — namely, 
that some power acquainted with and acting upon the 
knowledge of those laws, fashioned the organ with the 
intention of having the function performed, or con- 
structed the system so that it might endure. Is not 
this last process as much one of strict induction as the 
other? It is plainly only a generalization of many par- 
ticular facts; a reasoning from things known to things 
unknown; an inference of a new or unknown relation 
from other relations formerly observed and known. If, 
to take Dr. Paley's example, we pass over a common 
and strike the foot against a stone, we do not stop to 
ask who placed it there; but if we find that our foot 
has struck on a watch, we at once conclude that some 
mechanic made it, and that some one dropt it on the 
ground. Why do we draw this inference? Because 
all our former experience had told us that such machi- 
nery is the result of human skill and labour, and that 
it nowhere grows wild about, or is found in the earth. 
When we see that a certain effect, namely, distinct 
vision, is performed by an achromatic instrument, the 
eye, why do we infer that some one must have made 
it? Because we nowhere and at no time have had any 
experience of any one thing fashioning itself, and in- 
deed cannot form to ourselves any distinct idea of what 
such a process as self-creation means ; and further, be- 
cause when we ourselves would produce a similar re- 
sult, we have recourse to like means. Again, when 
we perceive the adaptation of natural objects and ope- 
rations to a perceived end, and from thence infer de- 
sign in the maker of these objects and superintender of 
these operations, why do we draw this conclusion? Be- 
cause we know by experience that if we ourselves de- 



3S 

^rt-ed to accomplish a similar purpose, we should do so 
by the like adaptation ; we know by experience that 
this is design in us, and that our proceedings are the 
result of such design; we know that if some of our 
works were seen by others, who neither were aware 
of our having made them, nor of the intention with 
which we made them, they would be right should they, 
from seeing and examining them, both infer that we 
had made them, and conjecture why we had made 
them. The same reasoning, by the help of experience, 
from what we know to what we cannot know, is ma- 
nifestly the foundation of the inference, that the mem- 
bers of the body were fashioned for certain uses by a 
maker acquainted with their operations, and willing 
that those uses should be served. 

Let us consider a branch of science which, if not 
wholly of modern introduction, has received of late 
years such vast additions that it may really be said to 
have its rise in our own times — I allude to the sublime 
speculations in Osteology prosecuted by Cuvier, Buck- 
land, and others, in its connexion with Zoological and 
Geological researches. 

A comparative anatomist, of profound learning and 
marvellous sagacity, has presented to him what to 
common eyes would seem a piece of half-decayed bone, 
found in a wild, in a forest, or in a cave. By accu- 
rately examining its shape, particularly the form of its 
extremity or extremities (if both ends happen to be 
entire,) by close inspection of the texture of its sur- 
face, and by admeasurement of its proportions, he can 
with certainty discover the general form of the animal 
to which it belonged, its size as well as its shape, the 
economy of its viscera, and its general habits. Some- 
times the investigation in such cases proceeds upon 
chains of reasoning where all the links are seen and 
understood; where the connexion of the parts found 
with other parts and with habitudes is perceived, and 
the reason understood, — as that the animal had a trunk 
because the neck was short compared with its height; 
or that it ruminated because its teeth were imperfect 



33 

for complete mastication. But, frequently, the inquiry 
IS as certain in its results, although some links of the 
chain are concealed from our view, and the conclusion 
wears a more empirical aspect — as gathering that the 
animal ruminated from observing the print of a cloven 
hoof, or that he had horns from his wanting certain 
teeth, or that he wanted the collar-bone from his having 
cloven hoofs. Limited experience having already shown 
such connexions as facts, more extended experience will 
assuredly one day enable us to comprehend the reason 
of the connexion. 

The discoveries already made in this branch of sci- 
ence are truly wonderful, and they proceed upon the 
strictest rules of induction. It is shown that animals 
formerly existed on the globe, being unknown varie- 
ties of species still known ; but it also appears that 5^e- 
cie5' existed, and even genera, wholly unknown for the 
last five thousand years. These peopled the earth, as 
it was, not before the general deluge, but before some 
convulsion long prior to that event had overwhelmed 
the countries then dry, and raised others from the bot- 
tom of the sea. In these curious inquiries, we are con- 
versant not merely with the world before the flood, but 
with a world which, before the flood, was covered 
with water, and which, in far earlier ages, had been 
the habitation of birds, and beasts, and reptiles. We 
are carried, as it were, several worlds back, and we 
reach a period when all was water, and slime, and 
mud, and the waste, without either man or plants, 
gave resting place to enormous beasts like lions and 
elephants and river-horses, while the water was te- 
nanted by lizards, the size of a whale, sixty or seven- 
ty feet long, and by others with huge eyes having 
shields of solid bone to protect them, and glaring from 
a neck ten feet in length, and the air was darkened 
by flying reptiles covered with scales, opening the 
jaws of the crocodile, and expanding wings, armed at 
the tips with the claws of the leopard. 

No less strange, and yet no less proceeding from in- 
duction, are the discoveries made respecting the for- 

4 



34 

mer state of the earth ; the manner in which those ani- 
mals, whether of known or unknown tribes, occupied 
it; and the period when, or, at least, the way in which 
they ceased to exist Professor Buckland has demon- 
strated the identity with the hyena's of the animal's 
habits that cracked the bones which fill some of the 
caves, in order to come at the marrow ; but he has 
also satisfactorily shown that it inhabited the neigh- 
bourhood, and must have been suddenly exterminated 
by drowning. His researches have been conducted by 
experiments with living animals, as well as by obser- 
vation upon the fossil remains.* 

That this branch of scientific inquiry is singularly 
attractive all will allow. Nor will any one dispute 
that its cultivation demands great knowledge and skill. 
But this is not our chief purpose in referring to it. 
There can be as little doubt that the investigation, in 
the strictest sense of the term, forms a branch of phy- 
sical science, and that this branch sprang legitimately 
from the grand root of the whole, — induction; in a 
word, that the process of reasoning employed to in- 
vestigate — the kind of evidence used to demonstrate 
its truths, is the modern analysis or induction taught 
by Bacon and practised by Newton. Now wherein, 
with reference to its nature and foundations, does it 
vary from the inquiries and illustrations of Natural 
Theology? When from examining a few bones, or 
it may be a single fragment of a bone, we infer that, 

* The researches both of Cuvier and Buckland, far from im- 
pugning the testimony to the great fact of a dehige borne by the 
Mosaic writings, rather fortify it; and bring additional proofs of the 
fallacy which, for some time, had led philosophers to ascribe a very 
high antiquity to the world we now live in. 

The extraordinary sagacity of Cuvier is, perhaps, in no instance 
more shown, nor the singular nature of the science better illustrated, 
than in the correction which it enabled him to give the speculation 
of President Jefferson upon the Megalonyx — an animal which the 
President, from the size of a bone discovered, supposed to have ex- 
isted, four times the size of an ox, and with the form and habits of 
the lion. Cuvier has irrefragably shown, by an acute and learned 
induction, that the animal was a sloth, living entirely upon vegeta- 
ble food, but of enormous size, like a rhinoceros, and whose paws 
could tear up huge trees. 



35 

in the wilds where we found it, there lived and ranged, 
some thousands of years ago, an animal wholly dif- 
ferent from any we ever saw, and from any of which 
any account, any tradition, written or oral, has reached 
us, nay, from any that ever was seen by any person, 
of whose existence we ever heard, w^e assuredly are 
led to this remote conclusion, by a strict and rigorous 
process of reasoning; but, as certainly, we come 
through that process to the knowledge and belief of 
things unseen, both of us and of all men — things re- 
specting which we have not, and cannot have, a 
single particle of evidence, either by sense or by tes- 
timony. Yet w^e harbour no doubt of the fact; we go 
farther, and not only implicitly believe the existence 
of this creature, for which we are forced to invent a 
name, but clothe it with attributes, till, reasoning step 
by step, we come at so accurate a notion of its form 
and habits, that we can represent the one, and de- 
scribe the other, with unerring accuracy; picturing 
to ourselves how it looked, what it fed on, and how 
it continued its kind. 

Now, the question is this: What perceivable dif- 
ference is there between the kind of investigations 
we have just been considering, and those of Natural 
Theology— except, indeed, that the latter are far more 
sublime in themselves, and incomparably more inte- 
resting to us? Where is the logical precision of the 
arrangement, which would draw a broad line of de- 
marcation between the two speculations, giving to 
the one the name and the rank of a science, and 
refusing it to the other, and affirming that the one 
rested upon induction, but not the other? We have, 
it is true, no experience directly of that Great Being's 
existence in whom we believe as our Creator; nor 
have we the testimony of any man relating such ex- 
perience of his own. But so, neither we, nor any 
witnesses in any age, have ever seen those works of 
that Being, the lost animals that once peopled the 
parth; ^nd yet the lights of inductive science have 



36 

conducted us to a full knowledge of their nature, as 
well as a perfect belief in their existence. Without 
any evidence from our senses, or from the testimony 
of eye-witnesses, we believe in the existence and 
qualities of those animals, because we infer by the in- 
duction of facts that they once lived, and were en- 
dowed with a certain nature. This is called a doc- 
trine of inductive philosophy. Is it less a doctrine 
of the same philosophy, that the eye could not have 
been made without a knowledge of optics, and as it 
could not make itself, and as no human artist, though 
possessed of the knowledge, has the skill and power 
to fashion it by his handiwork, that there must exist 
some being of knowledge, skill, and power, superior 
to our own, and sufficient to create it? 



SECTION III. 

COMPARISON OF THE PSYCHOLOaiCAL BRANCH OF NA- 
TURAL THEOLOGY WITH PSYCHOLOGY. 

Hitherto, our argument has rested upon a com* 
parison of the truths of Natural Theology with those 
of Physical Science. But the evidences of design 
presented by the universe are not merely those which 
the material world affords; the intellectual system is 
equally fruitful in proofs of an intelligent cause, al- 
though these have occupied little of the philosopher's 
attention, and may, indeed, be said never to have 
found a place among the speculations of the Natural 
Theologian. Nothing is more remarkable than the 
care with which all the writers upon this subject, at 
least among the moderns, have confined themselves 
to the proofs afforded by the visible and sensible 
works of nature, while the evidence furnished by th€^ 



37 

mind and its operations has been wholly neglected.* 
The celebrated book of Ray on the Wonders of the 
Creation seems to assume that the human soul has no 
separate existence — that it forms no part of the created 
system. Derham has written upon Astro-theology 
and Physico-theology as if the heavens alone pro- 
claimed the glory of God, and the earth 07ily showed 
forth his handiwork; for his only mention of intellec- 
tual nature is in the single chapter of the Physico- 
theology on the soul, in which he is content with two 
observations: one, on the variety of man's inclinations, 
and another, on his inventive powers — giving nothing 
which precisely proves design. Dr. Paley, whose 
work is chiefly taken from the writings of Derham, 
deriving from them its whole plan and much of its 
substance, but clothing the harsher statement of his 
original in an attractive and popular style,! had so 
little of scientific habits, so moderate a power of ge- 
neralizing, that he never once mentions the mind, or 
any of the intellectual phenomena, nor ever appears 
to consider them as forming a portion of the works 
or operations of nature. Thus, all these authors view 
the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, the structure 
of animals, the organization of plants, and the various 
operations of the material world which we see car- 
ried on around us, as indicating the existence of de- 
sign, and leading to a knowledge of the Creator. 
But they pass over in silence, unaccountably enough, 
by far the most singular work of divine wisdom 
and power — the mind itself. Is there any reason 
whatever to draw this line; to narrow within these 
circles the field of Natural Theology; to draw from 
the constitution and habits of matter alone the proof 

* Note II. 

f This observation in nowise diminishes the peculiar merit of the 
style, and also of the homely, but close and logical, manner in which 
the argument is put; nor does it deny the praise of bringing down 
the facts of former writers, and adapting them to the improved state 
of physical science — a merit the more remarkable, that Paley wrote 
his Natural Theology at the close of his life, 

4* 



38 

that one Intelligent Cause formed and supports the 
universe? Ought we not rather to consider the phe- 
nomena of the mind as more peculiarly adapted to 
help this inquiry, and as bearing a nearer relation to 
the Great Intelligence which created and which main- 
tains the system? 

There cannot be a doubt that this extraordinary 
omission had its origin in the doubts which men are 
prone to entertain of the mind's existence independent 
of matter. The eminent persons above named^ were 
not materialists, that is to say, if you had asked them 
the question, they would have answered in the nega- 
tive ; they w^ould have gone farther, and asserted their 
belief in the separate existence of the soul independent 
of the body. But they never felt this as strongly as 
they were persuaded of the natural world's existence. 
Their habits of thinking led them to consider matter as 
the only certain existence — as that which composed 
the universe — as alone forming the subject of our con- 
templations — as furnishing the only materials for our 
inquiries, whether respecting structure or habits and 
operations. They had no firm, definite, abiding, pre- 
cise idea of any other existence respecting which they 
could reason and speculate. They saw and they felt 
external objects; they could examine the lenses of the 
eye, the valves of the veins and arteries, the ligaments 
and the sockets of the joints, the bones and the drum 
of the ear; but though they now and then made men- 
tion of the mind, and, when forced to the point, would 
acknowledge a belief in it, they never were fully and 
intimately persuaded of its separate existence. They 
thought of it and of matter very differently; they gave 
its structure, and its habits, and its operations, no 

* Some have thought, unjustly, that the language of Paley rather 
savours of materialism; but it may be doubted whether he was fully 
impressed with the evidence of mental existence. His limited and 
unexercised powers of abstract discussion, and the natural predilec- 
tion for what he handled so well — a practical argument level to all 
comprehensions — appear not to have given him any taste for meta- 
physical speculations. 



39 

place in their inquiries; their contemplations never 
rested upon it with any steadiness, and indeed, scarcely 
ever even glanced upon it at all. That this is a very 
great omission, proceeding, if not upon mere careless- 
ness, upon a grievous fallacy, there can be no doubt 
whatever. 

The evidence for the existence of mind is to the full 
as complete as that upon which we beheve in the ex- 
istence of matter. Indeed, it is more certain and more 
irrefragable. The consciousness of existence, the per- 
petual sense that we are thinking, and that we are 
performing the operation quite independently of all 
material objects, proves to us the existence of a being 
different from our bodies, with a degree of evidence 
higher than any we can have for the existence of those 
bodies themselves, or of any other part of the material 
world. It is certain — proved, indeed, to demonstration 
— that many of the perceptions of matter which we 
derive through the senses are deceitful, and seem to in- 
dicate that which has no reality at all. Some infer- 
ences which we draw respecting it are confounded 
with direct sensation or perception, for example, the 
idea of motion ; other ideas, as those of hardness and 
solidity, are equally the result of reasoning, and often 
mislead. Thus, we never doubt, on the testimony of our 
senses, that the parts of matter touch — that different 
bodies come in contact with one another, and with our 
organs of sense ; and yet nothing is more certain than 
that there still is some small distance between the 
bodies which we think we perceive to touch. Indeed, 
it is barely possible that all the sensations and percep- 
tions which we have of the material world may be only 
ideas in our own minds : it is barely possible, therefore, 
that matter should have no existence. But that mind 
— that the sentient principle— that the thing or the 
being which we call " /" and " ?^e," and which thinks, 
feels, reasons — should have no existence, is a contra- 
diction in terms. Of the two existences, then, that of 
mind as independent of matter is more certain than 



40 

that of matter apart from mind. In a subsequent 
branch of this discourse,* we shall have occasion to 
treat again of this question, when the constitution of 
the soul with reference to its future existence becomes 
the subject of discussion. At present we have only to 
keep steadily in view the undoubted fact, that mind is 
quite as much an integral part of the universe as 
matter. 

It follows that the constitution and functions of the 
mind are as much the subjects of inductive reasoning 
and investigation, as the structure and actions of mat- 
ter. The mind equally with matter is the proper sub- 
ject of observation, by means of consciousness, which 
enables us to arrest and examine our own thoughts : 
it is even the subject of experiment, by the power 
which we have, through the efforts of abstraction and 
attention, of turning those thoughts into courses not 
natural to them, not spontaneous, and watching the 
results.f Now the phenomena of mind, at the know- 
ledge of which we arrive by this inductive process, the 
only legitimate intellectual philosophy, afford as deci- 
sive proofs of design as do the phenomena of matter, 
and they furnish those proofs by the strict method of 
induction. In other words, we study the nature and 
operations of the mind, and gather from them evidences 
of design, by one and the same species of reasoning, the 
induction of facts. A few illustrations of these positions 
may be useful, because this branch of the science has, 
as we have seen, been unaccountably neglected by 
philosophers and theologians. 

First The structure of the mind, in every way in 
which we can regard it, affords evidences of the most 
skilful contrivance. All that adapts it so admirably to 
the operations which it performs, all its faculties, are 
plainly means working to an end.. Among the most 
remarkable of these is the power of reasoning j or first 

* Sect. V. and Note IV. 

f An instance will occur in the Fifth Section of this Part, in which 
experiments upon the course of our thoughts in sleep are described. 



41 

comparing ideas and drawing conclusions from the 
comparison, and then comparing together those con- 
clusions or judgments. In this process, the great in- 
strument is attention, as indeed it is the most import- 
ant of all the mental faculties. It is the power by 
which the mind fixes itself upon a subject, and its 
operations are facilitated by many contrivances of na- 
ture, without which the effort would be painful, if not 
impossible — voluntary attention being the most difficult 
of all acts of the understanding. 

Observe, then, in the second place, the helps which 
are provided for the exertion of this faculty. Curiosity, 
or the thirst of knowledge, is one of the chief of these. 
This desire renders any new idea the source of attrac- 
tion, and makes the mind almost involuntarily, and with 
gratification rather than pain, bend and apply itself 
to whatever has the quality of novelty to rouse it. But 
association gives additional facilities of the same kind, 
and makes us attend with satisfaction to ideas which 
formerly were present and familiar, and the revival of 
\vhich gives pleasure oftentimes as sensible as that of 
novelty, though of an opposite kind. Then, again, 
habit, in this, as in all other operations of our faculties, 
has the most powerful influence, and enables us to un- 
dergo intellectual labour with ease and comfort. 

Thirdly. G)nsider the phenomena of memory. This 
important faculty, without which no intellectual pro- 
gress whatever could be made, is singularly adapted to 
its uses. The tenacity of our recollection is in propor- 
tion to the attention which has been exercised upon 
the several objects of contemplation at the time they 
were submitted to the mind. Hence it follows, that by 
exerting a more vigorous attention, by detaining ideas 
for some time under our view, as it were, while they 
pass through the mind or before it, we cause them to 
make a deeper impression upon the memory, and are 
thus enabled to recollect those things the longest which 
we most desire to keep in mind. Hence, too, whatever 
facilitates attention, whatever excites it, as we some- 



42 

times say, helps the memory ; so that we recollect those 
things the longest which were most striking at the time* 
But those things are, generally speaking, most striking, 
and most excite the attention, which are in themselves 
most important. In proportion, therefore, as any thing 
is most useful, or for any reason most desirable to be re- 
membered, it is most easily stored up in our memory. 

We may observe, however, in the fourth place, that 
readiness of memory is almost as useful as tenacity — 
quickness of bringing out as power of retention. Hahit 
enables us to tax our recollection with surprising facility 
and certainty ; as any one must be aware who has re- 
marked the extraordinary feats performed by boys 
trained to learn things by heart, and especially to re- 
collect numbers in calculating. From the same force of 
habit we derive the important power of forming artifi- 
cial or conventional associations between ideas — of 
tacking, as it were, one to the other, in order to have 
them more under our control ; and hence the relation 
between arbitrary signs and the things signified, and 
the whole use of language, whether ordinary or alge- 
braical: hence, too, the formation of what is called arti-* 
ficial memory, and of all the other helps to recollection. 
But a help is provided for quickness of memory, inde- 
pendent of any habit or training, in what may be 
termed the natural association of ideas, whereby one 
thing suggests another from various relations of like- 
ness, contrast, contiguity, and so forth. The same asso- 
ciation of ideas is of constant use in the exercise of the 
inventive faculty, which mainly depends upon it, and 
which is the great instrument not only in works of ima- 
gination, but in conducting all processes of original in- 
vestigation by pure reasoning. 

Fifthly, The effect of habit upon our whole intellec- 
tual system deserves to be further considered, though 
we have already adverted to it. It is a law of our nature 
that any exertion becomes more easy the more fre- 
quently it is repeated. This might have been other- 
wise: it might have been just the contrary, so that 



43 

each successive operation should have been more diffi- 
cult ; and it is needless to dwell upon the slowness of 
our progress, as well as the painfulness of all our ex- 
ertions, say, rather, the impossibihty of our making any 
advances in learning, which must have been the re- 
sult of such an intellectual conformation. But the in- 
fluence of habit upon the exercise of all our faculties 
is valuable beyond expression. It is indeed the great 
means of our improvement both intellectual and moral, 
and it furnishes us with the chief, almost the only, 
power we possess of making the different faculties of 
the mind obedient to the will. Whoever has observed 
the extraordinary feats performed by calculators, ora- 
tors, rhymers, musicians, nay, by artists of all descrip- 
tions, can want no further proof of the power that 
man derives from the contrivances by which habits are 
formed in all mental exertions. The performances of 
the Italian Improvvisatori, or makers of poetry off- 
handed upon any presented subject, and in almost any 
kind of stanza, are generally cited as the most sur- 
prising efibrts in this kind. But the power of extempore 
speaking is not less singular, though more frequently 
displayed, at least in this country. A practised orator 
will declaim in measured and in various periods — will 
weave his discourse into one texture — form parenthesis 
within parenthesis — excite the passions, or move to 
laughter — take a turn in his discourse from an accidental 
interruption, making it the topic of his rhetoric for five 
minutes to come, and pursuing in like manner the new 
illustrations to which it gives rise — mould his diction 
with a view to attain or to shun an epigrammatic point, 
or an alliteration, or a discord ; and all this with so 
much assured reliance on his own powers, and with 
such perfect ease to himself, that he shall even plan 
the next sentence while he is pronouncing offhand the 
one he is engaged with, adapting each to the other, and 
shall look forward to the topic which is to follow and 
fit in the close of the one he is handling to be its in- 
troducer ; nor shall any auditor be able to discover the 
least difference between all this and the portion of his 



44 

speech which he has got by heart, or tell the transition 
from the one to the other. 

Sixth, The feelings and the passions with which 
we are moved or agitated are devised for purposes 
apparent enough, and to effect which their adaptation 
is undeniable. That of love tends to the continuance 
of the species— the affections^ to the rearing of the 
young; and the former are fitted to the difference of 
sex, as the latter are to that of age. Generally there 
are feelings of sympathy excited by distress and by 
weakness, and these beget attachment towards their 
objects, and a disposition to relieve them or to sup- 
port. Both individuals and societies at large gain by 
the effects thence arising of union and connexion, and 
mutual help. So hope, of which the seeds are indi- 
genous in all bosoms, and which springs up like cer- 
tain plants in the soil as often as it is allowed to re- 
pose, encourages all our labours, and sustains us in 
every vicissitude of fortune, as well as under all tbe 
toils of our being. Feaj^ again, is the teacher of 
caution, prudence, circumspection, and preserves us 
from danger. Even anger, generally so painful, is 
not without its use; for it stimulates to defence, and 
it oftentimes assauges the pain given to our more ten- 
der feelings by the harshness or ingratitude, or injus- 
tice, or treachery of those upon whom our claims were 
the strongest, and whose cruelty or whose baseness 
would enter like steel into the soul, were no reaction 
excited to deaden and to protect it. Contempt, or 
even pity, is calculated to exercise the same healing 
influence.^ Then, to go no further, curiosity is im- 
planted in all minds to a greater or a less degree; it 
is proportioned to the novelty of objects, and conse- 
quently to our ignorance, and its immediate effects 
are to fix our attention — to stimulate our apprehen- 

* ** Atque illi (Grantor et Pansetius) quiJem etiam utlllter a na- 
ture dicebant permotiones istas animis nostris datas, metum cavendi 
caus^; misericordiam aegritudinemque clementix; ipsam iracundiam 
fortitudinis quasi cotem esse dicebant." — Acad. QusesL iv. 44. 



45 

Bive po\Vers — by deepening the impressions of all ideas 
on our minds, to give the memory a hold over them 
— to make all intellectual exertion easy, and convert 
into a pleasure the toil that would otherwise be a pain. 
Can any thing be more perfectly contrived as an in- 
strument of instruction, and an instrument precisely 
adapted to the want of knowledge, by being more 
powerful in proportion to the ignorance in which we 
are? Hence it is the great means by which, above 
all in early infancy, we are taught every thing 
most necessary for our physical as well as moral 
existence. In riper years it smooths the way for 
further acquirements to most men; to some, in whom 
it is strongest, it opens the paths of science; but in 
all, without any exception, it prevails at the begin- 
ning of life so powerfully as to make them learn the 
faculties of their own bodies, and the general proper- 
ties of those around them — an amount of knowledge 
which, for its extent and its practical usefulness, very 
far exceeds, though the most ignorant possess it, 
whatever additions the greatest philosophers are ena- 
bled to build upon it in the longest course of the most 
successful investigations. 

Nor is it the curiosity natural to us all that alone 
tends to the acquirement of knowledge ; the desire of 
communicating it is a strong propensity of our nature, 
and conduces to the same important end. There is 
a positive pleasure as well in teaching others what 
they knew not before, as in learning what we did not 
know ourselves; and it is undeniable that all this might 
have been differently arranged without a material al- 
teration of our intellectual and moral constitution in 
other respects. The propensity might have been, like 
the perverted desires of the miser, to retain what we 
know without communication, as it might have been 
made painful instead of pleasurable to acquire new 
ideas, by novelty being rendered repulsive, and not 
agreeable. The stagnation of our faculties, the sus- 

5 



46 

pension of mental exertion, the obscuration of the intet- 
lectual world, would have followed as certainly as uni- 
versal darkness would veil the universe on the extinc- 
tion of the sun. 

Thus far we have been considering the uses to which 
the mental faculties and feelings are subservient, and 
their admirable adaptation to these ends. But view the 
intellectual world as a whole, and surely it is impossi- 
ble to contemplate without amazement the extraordi- 
nary spectacle which the mind of man displays, and 
the immense progress which it has been able to make 
in consequence of its structure, its capacity, and its pro- 
pensities, such as we have just been describing them. If 
the brightness of the heavenly bodies, the prodigious ve- 
locity of their motions, their vast distances and mighty 
bulk, fill the imagination with awe, there is the same 
wonder excited by the brilliancy of the intellectual 
powers — the inconceivable swiftness of thought — the 
boundless range which our fancy can take — the vast ob- 
jects which our reason can embrace. That we should 
have been able to resolve the elements into their more 
simple constituents — to analyze the subtle light which 
fills all space — to penetrate from that remote particle in 
the universe, of which we occupy a speck, into regions 
infinitely remote — ascertain the weight of bodies at the 
surface of the most distant worlds — investigate the laws 
that govern their motions, or mould their forms — and 
calculate to a second of time the periods of their re- 
appearance during the revolution of centuries, — all this 
is in the last degree amazing, and affords much more 
food for admiration than any of the phenomena of the 
material creation. Then what shall we say of that 
incredible power of generalization which has enabled 
some even to anticipate by ages the discovery of truths 
the farthest removed above ordinary apprehension, and 
the most savouring of improbability and fiction — not 
merely of a Clairaut conjecturing the existence of a 
seventh planet, and the position of its orbit, but of a 



47 

Newton learnedly and sagaciously inferring, from the 
refraction of light, the inflammable quality of the dia- 
mond, the composition of apparently the simplest of the 
elements, and the opposite nature of the two ingredients, 
unknown for a century after, of which it is composed?^ 
Yet there is something more marvellous still in the pro- 
cesses of thought, by which such prodigies have been 
performed, and in the force of the mind itself, when it 
acts wholly without external aid, borrowing nothing 
whatever from matter, and relying on its own powers 
alone. The most abstruse investigations of the mathe- 
matician are conducted without any regard to sensible 
objects; and the helps he derives in his reasonings from 
material things at all, are absolutely insignificant, com- 
pared with the portion of his work which is altogether 
of an abstract kind — the aid of figures and letters being 
only to facilitate and abridge his labour, and not at all 
essential to his progress- Nay, strictly speaking, there 
are no truths in the whole range of the pure mathe- 
matics which might not, by possibility, have been disco- 
vered and systematized by one deprived of sight and 
touch, or immured in a dark chamber, without the use 
of a single material object. The instrument of New- 
ton*s most sublime speculations, the calculus which he 
invented, and the astonishing systems reared by its 
means, which have given immortality to the names of 
Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, all are the creatures of pure 
abstract thought, and all might, by possibility, have 
existed in their present magnificence and splendour, 
without owing to material agency any help whatever, 
except such as might be necessary for their recording 
and communication. These are, surely, the greatest 
of all the wonders of nature, when justly considered, 
although they speak to the understanding and not to 

• Farther induction may add to the list of these wonderful con- 
jectures, the thin ether, of which he even calculated the density' 
and the effects upon planetary motion. Certainly the acceleration 
qI Enc^e's cprpet dQe$ ^ei?i to render this by no means improbable. 



48 

the sense. Shall we, then, deny that the eye could be 
made without skill in optics, and yet admit that the 
mind could be fashioned and endowed without the most 
exquisite of all skill, or could proceed from any but an 
intellect of infinite power? 

At first sight, it may be deemed that there is an es- 
sential difference between the evidence from mental 
and from physical phenomena. It may be thought 
that mind is of a nature more removed beyond our 
power than matter — that over the masses of matter 
man can himself exercise some control — that, to a 
certain degree, he has a plastic power — that into 
some forms he can mould them, and can combine into 
a certain machinery — that he can begin and can con- 
tinue motion, and can produce a mechanism by which 
it may be begun, and maintained, and regulated — 
while mind, it may be supposed, is wholly beyond his 
reach; over it he has no grasp; its existence alone is 
known to him, and the laws by which it is regulated ; 
and thus, it may be said, the great First Cause, which 
alone can call both matter and mind into existence, 
has alone the power of modulating intellectual nature. 
But, when the subject is well considered, this diffe- 
rence between the two branches of science disappears 
with all the rest. It is admitted, of course, that we 
can no more create matter than we can mind; and we 
can influence mind in a way altogether analogous to 
our power of modulating matter. By means of the 
properties of matter we can form instruments, ma- 
chines, and figures. So, by availing ourselves of the 
properties of mind, we can affect the intellectual facul- 
ties — exercising them, training them, improving them„ 
producing, as it were, new forms of the understanding. 
Nor is there a greater difference between the mass of 
rude iron from which we make steel, and the thou- 
sands of watch-springs into which that steel is cut, or 
the chronometer which we form of this and othei 
masses equally inert — ^than there is between the untv^^ 



49 

tored indocile faculties of a rustic, who has grown up 
to manhood without education, and the skill of the art- 
ist who invented that chronometer, and of the mathe- 
matician who uses it to trace the motions of the hea- 
venly bodies. 

Although writers on Natural Theology have alto- 
gether neglected, at least in modern times, that branch 
of the subject at large with which we have now been 
occupied, there is one portion of it which has always 
attracted their attention — the Instincts of animals. 
These are unquestioDably mental faculties, which we 
discover by observation and consciousness, but which 
are themselves wholly unconnected with any exercise 
of reason. They exhibit, however, the most striking 
proofs of design, for they all tend immediately to the 
preservation or to the comfort of the animals endowed 
with them. The lower animals are provided with a 
far greater variety of instincts, and of a more singular 
kind than man, because they have only the most cir- 
cumscribed range and feeblest powers of reason, while 
to reason man is in almost every thing indebted. Yet 
it would be as erroneous to deny that we are endowed 
with any instincts, because so much is accomplished 
by reason, as it would be rash to conclude that other 
animals are wholly destitute of reasoning, because they 
owe so much to instinct. Granting that infants learn 
almost all those animal functions which are of a volun- 
tary nature, by an early exercise of reason, it is plain 
that instinct alone guides them in others which are ne- 
cessary to continue their life, as well as to begin their 
instruction: for example, the/ suck, and even swallow 
by instinct, and by instinct they grasp what is pre- 
sented to their hands. So, allowing that the brutes ex- 
ercise but very rarely, and in a limited extent, the 
reasoning powers, it seems impossible to distinguish 
from the operations of reason those instances of saga- 
city which some dogs exhibit in obeying the directions 
of their master, and indeed generally the docility 
fihown by them and other animals; not to mention the 

5* 



50 

ingenuity of birds in breaking hard substances by lei- 
ting them drop from a height, and in bringing the wa- 
ter of a deep pitcher nearer their beaks by throwing 
in pebbles. These are different from the operations of 
instinct, because they are acts which vary with cir- 
cumstances novel and unexpectedly varying ; they im- 
ply therefore the adaptation of means to an end, and 
the power of varying those means when obstacles 
arise : we can have no evidence of design, that is of 
reason, in other men, which is not similar to the proof 
of reason in animals afforded by such facts as these. 

But the operations of pure instinct, by far the great- 
er portion of the exertions of brutes, have never been 
supposed by any one to result from reasoning, and cer- 
tainly they do afford the most striking proofs of an in- 
telligent cause, as well as of a unity of design in the 
world. The work of bees is among the most remark- 
able of all facts in both these respects. The form is 
in every country the same — the proportions accurately 
alike — the size the very same to the fraction of a line, 
go where you will ; and the form is proved to be that 
which the most refined analysis has enabled mathema- 
ticians to disco\fer as of all others the best adapted for 
the purposes of saving room, and work, and materials. 
This discovery was only made about a century ago ; 
nay, the instrument that enabled us to find it out — the 
fluxional calculus — was unknown half a century before 
that application of its powers. And yet the bee had 
been for thousands of years, in all countries, unerringly 
working according to this fixed rule, choosing the same 
exact angle of 120 degrees for the inclination of the 
sides of its little room, which every one had for age» 
known to be the best possible angle, but also choosing 
the same exact angles of 110 and 70 degrees, for the 
parallelograms of the roof, which no one had ever dis- 
covered till the 18th century, when Maclaurin solved 
that most curious problem of maxima, and minima, the 
means of investigating which had not existed till the 
century before, when Newton invented the calculus 



51 

whereby such problems can now be easily worked. It 
is impossible to conceive any thing more striking as a 
. proof of refined skill than the creation of such instincts^ 
and it is a skill altogether applied to the formation of 
intellectual existence. 

Now, all the inferences drawn from the examination 
which we have just gone through of psychological phe- 
nomena are drawn according to the strict rules of in- 
ductive science. The facts relating to the velocity of 
mental operations — to the exercise of attention — to its 
connexion with memory — to the helps derived from 
curiosity and from habit — to the association of ideas — 
to the desires, feelings, and passions — and to the ad- 
joining provinces of reason and instinct — are all dis- 
covered by consciousness or by observation ; and we 
even can make experiments upon the subject by va- 
rying the circumstances in which the mental powei*s 
are exercised by ourselves and others, and marking 
the results. The facts thus collected and compared 
together we are enabled to generalize, and thus to 
show that certain effects are produced by an agency 
calculated to produce them. Aware that if we desired 
to produce them, and had the power to employ this 
agency, we should resort to it for accomplishing our 
purpose, we infer both that some being exists capable 
of creating this agency, and that he employs it for this 
end. The process of reasoning is not like, but identical 
with, that by which we infer the existence of design 
in others (than ourselves) with whom we have daily 
intercourse. The kind of evidence is not like, but iden- 
tical with, that by which we conduct all the investiga- 
tions of intellectual and of natural science. 

Such is the process of reasoning by which we infer 
the existence of design in the natural and moral 
world. To this abstract argument an addition of 
great importance remains to be made. The whole 
reasoning proceeds necessarily upon the assumption 
that there exists a being or thing separate from, and 



52 

independent of, matter, and conscious of its own ex- 
istence, which we call mind. For the argument is — 
" Had I to accomplish this purpose, I should have 
used some such means;'' or, /"Had I used these 
means, I should have thought I was accomplishing 
some such purpose.'^ Perceiving the adaptation of 
the means to the end, the inference is, that some 
being has acted as we should ourselves act, and with 
the same views. But when w^e so speak, and so rea- 
son, we are all the while referring to an intelligent 
principle or existence; we are referring to our mind, 
and not to our bodily frame. The agency which we 
infer from this reasoning is, therefore, a spiritual and 
immaterial agency — the working of something like 
our own mind — an intelligence like our own, though 
incomparably more powerful and more skilful. The 
being of whom we thus acquire a knowledge, and 
whose operations as well as existence we thus de- 
duce from a process of iaductive reasoning, must be a 
spirit, and wholly immaterial. But his being such 
is only inferred because we set out with assuming the 
separate existence of our own mind, independently of 
matter. Without that we never could conclude that 
superior intelligence existed or acted. The belief 
that mind exists is essential to the whole argument 
by which we infer that the Deity exists. This be- 
lief we have shown to be perfectly well grounded, 
and further occasions of confirming the truth of it will 
occur under another head of discourse.^ But at any 
rate it is the foundation of Natural Theology in all 
its branches; and upon the scheme of materialism no 
rational, indeed no intelligible, account can be given 
of a first cause, or of the creation or government of 
the universe.! 

* Sect, v., and Note IV. 

f It is worthy of observation, that not the least allusion is made in 
Dr. Paley's work to the argument here stated, although it is the 
foundation of the whole of Natural Theology. Not only does this 



53 

The preceding observations have been directed to 
the inquiries respecting the design exhibited in the 
universe. But the other parts of the first great branch 
of natural theology come strictly within the scope of 
the same reasoning. Thus, all the proofs of the 
Deity's personality^ that is, his individuality, his 
unity; all the evidence which we have of his works, 
showing throughout not only that they proceeded 
from design, but that the design is of one distinctive 
kind — that they come from the hand not only of an 
intelligent being, but of a being whose intellect is 
specifically peculiar, and always of the same charac- 
ter; all these proofs are in the most rigorous sense in- 
ductive. 

author leave entirely untouched the argument d. priori (as it is 
called,) and also all the inductive arguments derived from the phe« 
nomena of mind, but he does not even advert to the argument upoi> 
which the inference of design must of necessity rest — that design 
which is the whole subject of his book. Nothing can more evince 
his distaste or incapacity for metaphysical researches. He assumea 
the very position which alone skeptics dispute. In combating hinx 
tliey would assert that he begged the whole question; for certainly 
they do not deny, at least in modern times, the fact of adaptation. 
As to the fundamental doctrine of causation, not the least allusion \% 
ever made to it in any of his writings, even in his Moral Philosophy, 
This doctrine is discussed in Note III, 



54 



SECTION IV. 



OF THE ARGUMENT A PRIORI. 

Hitherto we have confined our attention to the 
evidence of Natural Religion afforded by the phe- 
nomena of the universe — what is commonly termed 
the Sly gumeni a posteriori. But some ingenious men, 
conceiving that the existence and attributes of a Deity 
are discoverable by reasoning merely, and without 
reference to facts, have devised what they term the 
argument a pynori^ of which it is necessary now to 
speak. 

The first thing that strikes us on this subject is the 
consequence which must inevitably follow from ad- 
mitting the possibility of discerning the existence of 
the Deity and his attributes a priori^ or wholly in- 
dependent of facts. It would follow that this is a ne- 
cessary, not a contingent truth, and that it is not only 
as impossible for the Deity not to exist, as for the 
whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, but that 
it is equally impossible for his attributes to be other 
than the argument is supposed to prove they are. 
Thus, the reasoners in question show by the argument 
a priori^ that he is a being of perfect wisdom and per- 
fect benevolence. Dr. Clarke is as clear of this as 
he is clear that his existence is proved by the same ar- 
gument. Now, first, it is impossible that any such 
truths can be necessary; for their contraries are not 
things wholly inconceivable, inasmuch as there is 
nothing at all inconceivable in the Maker of the uni- 
verse existing as a being of limited power and of 



55 

mixed goodness, nay, of malevolence. We never, be-^ 
fore all experience, could pronounce it mathematical- 
ly impossible that such a being should exist, and 
should have created the universe. But next, the facts, 
when we came to examine them, might disprove the 
conclusions drawn ci priori. The universe might by 
possibility be so constructed that every contrivance 
might fail to produce the desired effect — the eye might 
be chromatic and give indistinct images — the joints 
might be so unhinged as to impede motion — every 
smell, as Paley has it, might be a stink, and every 
touch a sting. Indeed, we know that, perfect as the 
frame of things actually is, a few apparent exceptions 
to the general beauty of the system have made many 
disbelieve the perfect power and perfect goodness of 
the Deity, and invent Manichean theories to account 
for the existence of evil. Nothing can more clearly 
show the absurdity of those arguments by which it is 
attempted to demonstrate the truths of this science 
as mathematical or necessary, and cognizable cl pri^ 
ori. 

But, secondly^ let us see whether the argument in 
question be really one a priori^ or only a very im- 
perfect process of induction — an induction from a li- 
mited number of facts. 

Dr. Clarke is the chief patron of this kind of de* 
monstration, as he terms it; and though his book con- 
tains it more at large, the statement of his fundamen- 
tal argument is, perhaps, to be found most distinctly 
given in the letters subjoined to that celebrated work. 
The fundamental propositions in the discourse itself 
are, That something must have existed from all eter- 
nity, and that this something must have been a being 
independent and self-existent. In the letters he con- 
denses, perhaps explains, certainly illustrates, these 
positions, (see Answers to Letters 3, 4, and 5,) by 
arg^aing that the existence of space and time (or, as 
he terms it, duration) proves the existence of some- 
thing whereof these are qualities, for they are not 



56 

themselves substances; he cites the celebrated Scho^ 
Hum Generale of the Principia; and he concludes 
that the Deity must be the infinite being of whom 
they are qualities. 

But to argue from the existence of space and time 
to the existence of any thing else, is assuming that 
those two things have a real being independent of 
our conceptions of them: for the existence of certain 
ideas in our minds cannot be the foundation on which 
to build a conclusion that any thing external to our 
minds exists. To infer that space and time are qua- 
lities of an infinite and eternal being is surely as- 
suming the very thing to be proved, if a proposition 
can be said to have a distinct meaning at all which 
predicates space and time as qualities of any thing. 
What, for example, is time but the succession of 
ideas, and the consciousness and the recollection 
v^hich we have of that succession? To call it a qua- 
lity is absurd, as well might we call motion a quality, 
or our ideas of absent things and persons a quality. 

Again, if space is to be deemed a quality, and if in- 
finite space be the quality of an infinite being, finite 
space must also be a quality, and must, by parity of 
reason, be the quality of a finite being. Of what 
being? Here is a cube of one foot within an ex- 
hausted receiver, or a cylinder of half an inch diame- 
ter and three inches high in the Torricellian vacuum. 
What is the being of whom that square and that cy- 
lindrical space are to be deemed as qualities? Is 
distance, that is, the supposed movement of a point 
in a straight line ad infinitum^ a quality? It must 
be so, if infinite space is. Then of what is it a quali- 
ty? If infinite space is the quality of an infinite 
being, infinite distance must be the quality of an in- 
finite being also. But can it be said to be the quali- 
ty of the same infinite being? Observe that the 
mind can form just as correct an idea of infinite dis- 
tance as of infinite space, or, rather, it can form a 
somewhat more distinct idea. But the being to be 



57 

inferred from this infinite distance cannot be exactly 
the same in kind with that to be inferred from space 
infinite in all directions. Again, if infinite distance 
shows an infinite being of whom it is the quality, 
finite distance must be the quality of a finite being. 
What being? Of what kind of being is the distance 
between two trees or two points a quality? There 
can be no doubt that this argument rests either upon 
the use of words without meaning, or it is a disguised 
form of the old doctrine of the anhna mundi^ or of 
the hypothesis that the whole universe is a mere 
emanation of the Deity. 

But it deserves to be remarked that this argument, 
which professes to be a priori., and wholly indepen- 
dent of all experience, is, strictly speaking, inductive, 
and nothing more. We can have no idea whatever 
of space apart from experience. The experience of 
space filled with matter enables us, by means of ab- 
straction, to conceive space without the matter; and 
a farther abstraction and generalization enable us to 
conceive infinite space by imagining the limits inde- 
finitely removed of a particular portion of space. 
But the foundation of the whole reasoning is the ex- 
perience of certain finite portions of space first ob- 
served in connexion with matter. Therefore our 
ideas of space are the result of our experience as to 
external objects. Even if we could fancy figure 
(which is possible' without having seen or touched 
any objects external to ourselves, still it would be the 
experience of our own ideas that had given us this 
idea. So of time; it is the succession of our ideas, 
and we have the notion of it from consciousness and 
memory. From hence we form an idea of indefinite 
time or eternal duration. But the basis of the whole 
is the observation which we have made upon the ac- 
tual succession of our ideas; and this is inductive, 
though the process of reasoning be very short. It is 
as much a process of inductive reasoning as that by 
which we arrive at the knowledge of the mind's ex- 

6 



58 

istence. There is, therefore, great inaccuracy in de* 
nominating the argument in question, were it ever so 
sound, an argument a priori^ for it is a reasoning 
founded on experience, and it is to be classed with 
the arguments derived from the observation of exter- 
nal objects, the ground of our reasoning a posteriori 
as to matter, or, at the utmost, with the information 
given by consciousness, the whole ground of our rea- 
soning cl posteriori as to mind. 

When, however. Dr. Clarke has once fixed the pro- 
positions to which we have been adverting, he de- 
duces from them the whole qualities of the Deity — 
those which we learn from experience — and thinks 
he can derive them all from the simple propositions 
that lie at the foundation of his argument. It is truly 
astonishing to find so profound a thinker, and, gene- 
rally speaking, so accurate a reasoner, actually sup- 
posing that he can deduce from the proposition, 
that a self-existent being must have existed from 
all time, this other proposition that, therefore, this 
being must be infinitely wise, (Prop. XI.,) and that 
he " must of necessity be a being of infinite good- 
ness, justice, and truth, and all other moral per- 
fections, such as become the supreme governor 
'dxid Judge of the world. '^ (Prop. XII.) With the 
general texture of this argument we have at present 
nothing to do, further than to show how little it can 
by possibility deserve the name either of an argument 
a priori, or be regarded as the demonstration of a ne- 
cessary truth. For surely, prior to all experience, 
no one could ever know that there were such things 
as either judges or governors; and without the pre- 
vious idea of a finite or worldly ruler and judge, we 
could never gain any idea of an eternal and infinitely 
just ruler or judge; and equally certain it is that this 
demonstration, if it proves the existence of an infinite 
and eternal ruler or judge to be a necessary and not a 
contingent truth (which is Dr. Clarke's whole argu- 
ment,) w^ould just as strictly prove the existence of 



59 

finite rulers and judges to be a necessary and not a 
contingent truth; or, in other words, it would follow, 
tliat the existence of governors and judges in the 
world is a necessary truth, like the equality of the 
three angles in a triangle to two right angles, and 
that it would be a contradiction in terms, and so an 
impossibility, to conceive the world existing without 
governors and judges. 

I believe it may safely be said, that very few men 
have ever formed a distinct apprehension of the na- 
ture of Dr. Clarke's celebrated argument, and that 
hardly any person has ever been at all satisfied with 
it. The opinion of Dr. Reid is well known upon 
this subject, and it has received the full acquiescence 
of no less an authority than that of Mr. Stewart. 

" These,^' says Dr. Reid, " are the speculations of 
men of superior genius; but whether they be as solid 
as they are sublime, or w^hether they be the wander- 
ings of imagination in a region beyond the limits of 
human understanding, I am unable to determine.^^ 

To this Mr. Stewart adds — " After this candid ac- 
knowledgment from Dr. Reid, I need not be ashamed 
to confess my own doubts and difficulties on the same 
subject.'^* 

That the argument a priori has been most explicit- 
ly handled by Dr. Clarke, and that its acceptation 
rests principally upon his high authority, cannot be 
denied. Nevertheless, other great men preceded himi 
in this field; and besides Sir Isaac Newton, whose 
Scholium Generale is thought to have suggested it, 
the same reasoning is to be found in the writings of 
others of Dr. Clarke's predecessors. 

The tenth chapter of Mr. Locke's fourth book does 
not materially differ, in its fundamental position, 
from the " Demonstration of the Beingand Attributes." 
The argument is all drawn from the truth, assumed 
.as self-evident, "Nothing can no more produce any 

♦ philosophy of the Active Powers, i. 334, 



60 

real being than it can be equal to two right angles/^ 
From this, and the knowledge we have of our own 
existence, it is shown to follow, that "from eternity 
there has been something:'^ and again, "that this 
eternal being must have been most powerful and most 
knowing/' and "therefore God.'^ The only differ- 
ence between this argument and Dr. Clarke's is, that 
Mr. Locke states, as one of his propositions, our 
knowledge of our own existence. But this difference 
is only in appearance; for Dr. Clarke really has as- 
sumed what Mr. Locke has more logically made a dis- 
tinct proposition. Dr. Clarke's first proposition, that 
something must have existed from all eternity, is de- 
monstrated by showing the absurdity of the suppo- 
sition that "the things which now^ are were produced 
out of nothing." He therefore assumes the existence 
of those things, while Mr. Locke more strictly as- 
sumes the existence of ourselves only, and indeed 
states it as a proposition. The other arguments of Mr. 
Locke are more ingenious than Dr. Clarke's, and the 
whole reasoning is more rigorous, although he does 
not give it the name of a demonstration, and scarcely 
can be said to treat it as proving the Deity's existence 
to be a necessary truth. Were it to be so considered, 
the objections formerly stated would apply to it. In- 
deed, if Dr. Clarke had stated the different steps of 
his reasoning as distinctly as Mr. Locke, he would 
have perceived it to be inconclusive beyond a very 
limited extent, and to that extent inductive.* 

Dr. Cudworth, in the fifth chapter of his greatwork,t 
has, in answering the Democritick arguments, so plain- 
ly anticipated Dr. Clarke, that it is hardly possible to 
conceive how the latter should have avoided referring 

* See particularly Mr. Locke's proofs of his first position. (Hum. 
Understanding, IV. x, sec. 2.) 

•\ Intellectual System, Book I., c. v., s. 3. par. 4. The profound 
learning" of this unfinished work, and its satisfactory exposition of the 
ancient philosophers, are above all praise. Why are the manu- 
ggripts of the author still buried in the British Museum? 



to it* " If space be indeed a nature distinct from 
body, and a thing really incorporeal, then will it un- 
deniably follow, from this very principle of theirs 
(the Democritists,) that there must be incorporeal 
space; and (this space being supposed by them also 
to be infinite) an infinite incorporeal Deity. Because 
if space be not the extension of body, nor an affection 
thereof, then must it of necessity be, either an accident 
existing alone by itself, without a substance, which is 
impossible; or else the extension or affection of some 
other incorporeal substance that is infinite. ^^ He then 
supposes a reply (founded on the doctrines of Gas- 
send!,) that space is of a middle nature and essence, 
and proceeds to observe upon it; — "Whatsoever is, 
or hath any kind of entity, doth either subsist by it-^ 
self, or else is an attribute, afiection, or mode of some- 
thing that doth subsist by itself. For it is certain 
that there can be no mode, accident, or affection of 
nothing; and, consequently, that nothing cannot be 
extended nor mensurable. But if space be neither 
the extension of body, nor yet of substance incorpo- 
real, then must it of necessity be the extension of 
nothing, and the affection of nothing, -and nothing 
must be measurable by yards and poles. We con- 
clude, therefore, that from this very hypothesis of the 
Democritick and Epicurean atheists, that space is a 
nature distinct from body, and positively infinite; it 
follows undeniably that there must be some incorpo- 
real substance whose affection its extension is; and 
because there, can be nothing infinite but only the 
Deity, that it is the infinite extension of our incorpo- 
real Deity. '^ The statement of Dr. Clarke's argu- 
ment, given in his correspondence, is manifestly, if 
not taken from this, at least coincident with it in 
every important respect. Dr. Cudworth, indeed, con- 
fines his reasoning to the consideration of space and 

* Ciidworth's book was published in 1678. The "Demonstra- 
tion " was delivered in 1704-5 at the Boyle Lecture. 

6* 



62 

immensity, and Dr. Clarke extends his to time and 
eternity also. But of the two portions of the ar- 
gument this has been shown to be the most falla- 
cious. 

The arguments of the ancient theists were in great 
part drawn from metaphysical speculations, some of 
which resembled the argument ci priori.^ But they 
were pressed by the difficulty of conceiving the pos- 
sibility of creation, whether of matter or spirit; and 
their inaccurate views of physical science made them 
consider this difficulty as peculiar to the creative act. 
They were thus driven to the hypothesis that matter 
and mind are eternal, and that the creative power of 
the D^ity is only plastic. They supposed it easy to 
comprehend how the divine mind should be eternal 
and self-existing, and matter also eternal and self-ex- 
isting. They found no difficulty in comprehending 
how that mind could, by a wish or a word, reduce 
chaos to order, and mould all the elements of things 
into their present form; but how every thing could 
be made out of nothing they could not understand. 
When rightly considered, however, there is no more 
difficulty in comprehending the one than the other 
operation — the existence of the plastic, than of the 
creative power; or rather, the one is as incompre- 
hensible as the other. How the Supreme Being nKide 
matter out of the void is not easily comprehended. 
This must be admitted; but is it more easy to con- 
ceive how the same Being, by his mere will, moved 
and fashioned the primordial atoms of an eternally 
existing chaos into the beauty of the natural world, 
or the regularity of the solar system? In truth, 
these difficulties meet us at every step of the ar- 
gument of Natural Theology, when w^e would pene- 
trate beyond those things, those facts which our fa- 
culties can easily comprehend; but they meet us just 
as frequently, and are just as hard to surmount, in our 
steps over the field of Natural Philosophy. How 

* Notes VI. and VII. 



63 

matter acts on matter — how motion is begun, or, 
when begun, ceases — how impact takes place — what 
are the conditions and limitations of contact — whether 
or not matter consists of ultimate particles, endowed 
with opposite powers of attraction and repulsion, and 
how these act — how one planet acts upon another at 
the distance of a hundred million of miles — or how 
one piece of iron attracts and repels another at a dis- 
tance less than any visible space — all these, and a 
thousand others of the like sort, are questions just as 
easily put, and as hard to answer, as how the universe 
could be made out of nothing, or how, out of chaos, 
order could be made to spring. 

In concluding these observations upon the argu- 
ment c^L priori, I may remark,' that although it carries 
us but a very little way, and would be unsafe to build 
upon alone, it is yet of eminent use in two particulars. 
First, it illustrates, if it does not indeed prove, the 
possibility of an Infinite Being existing beyond and 
independent of us, and of all visible things; and, se- 
condly, the fact of those ideas of immensity and eter- 
nity, forcing themselves, as Mr. Stewart expresses it, 
upon our belief, seems to furnish an additional argu- 
ment for the existence of an Immense and Eternal 
Being. At least we must admit that excellent person's 
remark to be well-founded, that after we have, by the 
argument a posteriori, (I should rather say the other 
parts of the ^vgnvaenih posteriori,) satisfied ourselves 
of the existence of an intelligent cause, we naturally 
connect with this cause those impressions which we 
have derived from the contemplation of infinite space 
and endless duration, and hence we clothe with the 
attributes of immensity and eternity the awful Being 
whose existence has been proved by a more rigorous 
process of investigation.* 

• Lord Spencer, who has deeply studied these abstruse subjects, 
communicated to me, before he was aware of my opinion, that he 
had arrived at nearly the same conclusion upon tlie merits of the ar- 
gument a priori. 



64 



SECTION V. 

MORAL OR ETHICAL BRANCH OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 

If we now direct our attention to the other great 
branch of Natural Theology, that which we have 
termed the moral or ethical portion, which treats of 
the probable designs of the Deity with respect to the 
future destiny of his creatures, we shall find that the 
same argument applies to the nature of its truths, 
which w^e have been illustrating in its application to 
the first or ontological branch of the science, or that 
relating to the existence and attributes of the Creator, 
whether proved by physical or by psychological rea- 
soning. The second branch, like the first, rests upon 
the same foundation with all the other inductive 
sciences, the only difference being that the one be- 
longs to the inductive science of Natural and Mental, 
and the other to the inductive science of Moral Phi- 
losophy. 

The means which we have of investigating the pro- 
bable designs of the Deity are derived from two 
sources — the nature of the human mind, and the at- 
tributes of the Creator. 

To the consideration of these we now proceed; but 
in discussing them, and especially the first, there is 
this difference to be marked as distinguishing them 
from the former branch of Natural Theology. They 
are far less abundant in doctrine; they have been 
much less cultivated by scientific inquirers, and the 
truths ascertained in relation to them are fewer in 
number: in a word, our knowledge of the Creator's 
designs in the order of nature is much more limited 
than our acquaintance with his existence and attributes. 
But, on the other hand, the identity of the evidence 
with that on which the other inductive sciences rest 
is far more conspicuous in what may be termed the 



65 

psychological part of the second branch of Natural 
Theology than in any portion of the first branch, it 
being much less apparent that the inferences drawn 
from facts in favour of the Deity's existence and at- 
tributes are of the same nature with the ordinary de- 
ductions of physical science — in other words, that 
this part of Natural Theology is a branch of Natural 
Philosophy — than it is that the deductions from the 
nature of the mind in favour of its separate and fu- 
ture existence are a branch of Metaphysical science. 

From this diversity it follows, that, in treating this 
second branch of the subject, there will be more ne- 
cessity for entering at large into the subject of the 
Deity's probable designs in regard to the soul, espe- 
cially those to be inferred from its constitution, th»an 
we found for entering into the evidences of his exist- 
ence and attributes, although there will not be so 
much labour required for proving that this is a branch 
of inductive science. 

i. psychological argument, or evidence or the 
deity's designs drawn from the nature of 

THE MIND. 

The Immateriality of the Soul is the foundation 
of all the doctrines, relating to its Future State. If 
it consists of material parts, or if it consists of any 
modification of matter, or if it is inseparably connect- 
ed with any combination of material elements, we 
have no reason whatever for believing that it can sur- 
vive the existence of the physical part of our frame; 
on the contrary, its destruction seems to follow as a 
necessary consequence of the dissolution of the body. 
It is true that the body is not destroyed in the sense 
of being annihilated; but it is equally true that the 
particular conformation, the particular arrangement of 
material particles w^ith which the soul is supposed to 
have been inseparably connected, or in which it is 
supposed to consist, is gone and destroyed even in 



66 

the sense of annihilation; for that arrangement or con- 
formation has no longer an existence, any more than 
a marble statue can be said to have an existence when 
it is burned into a mass of quicklime. Now, it is to 
the particular conformation and arrangement, and not 
to the matter itself, that the soul is considered as be- 
longing by any theory of materialism, there being 
none of the theories of materialists so absurd as to 
make the total mass of the particles themselves, inde- 
pendent of their arrangement, the seat of the soul. 
Therefore, the destruction of that form and organiza- 
tion as effectually destroys the soul which consists in 
it, as the beauty or the intellectual expression of the 
statue is gone when the marble is reduced to lime- 
dust. 

Happily, however, the doctrines of materialism 
rest upon no solid foundation, either of reason or ex- 
perience. The vague and indistinct form of the pro- 
positions in which they are conveyed, affords one 
strong argument against their truth. It is not easy 
to annex a definite meaning to the proposition that 
mind is inseparably connected with a particular ar- 
rangement of the particles of matter; it is more dif- 
ficult to say what they mean who call it a modifica- 
tion of matter; but to consider it as consisting in a 
combination of matter, as coming into existence the 
instant that the particles of matter assume a given ar- 
rangement, appears to be a wholly unintelligible col- 
location of words. 

Let us, however, resort to experience, and inquire 
what results may be derived from that safe guide 
whom modern philosophers most willingly trust, 
though despised as too humble a helpmate by most 
of the ancient sages. 

We may first of all observe that if a particular 
combination of matter gives birth to what we call 
mind, this is an operation altogether peculiar and un- 
exampled. We have no other instance of it; we 
know of no case in which the combination of certain 



67 

elements produces something quite different, not only 
from each of the simple ingredients, but also different 
from the whole compound. We can, by mixing an 
acid and an alkali, form a third body, having the qua- 
lities of neither, and possessing qualities of its own 
different from the properties of each; but here the 
third body consists of the other two in combination. 
There are not two things — two different existences — 
the neutral salt composed of the acid and the alkali, and 
another thing different from that neutral salt, and en-v 
gendered for the first time by that salt coming into 
existence. So when, by chiselling, " the marble 
softened into life grows warm,^^ we have the marble 
new-moulded, and endowed with the power of agree- 
ably affecting our senses, our memory, and our fancy; 
but it is all the while the marble: there is the beauti- 
ful and expressive marble instead of the amorphous 
mass, and we have not, besides the marble, a new ex- 
istence created by the form which has been given to 
that stone. But the materialists have to maintain 
that, by matter being arranged in a particular way, 
there is produced both the organized body and some- 
thing different from it, and having not one of its pro- 
perties — neither dimensions, nor weight, nor colour, 
nor form. They have to maintain that the chemist 
who mixed the aqua fortis and potash produced both 
nitre and something quite different from all the three, 
and which began to exist the instant that the nitre 
crystallized; and that the sculptor who fashioned the 
Apollo, not only made the marble into a human 
figure, but called into being something different from 
the marble and the statue, and which exists at the 
same time wnth both and without one property of 
either. If, therefore, their theory is true, it must be 
admitted to rest upon nothing which experience has 
ever taught us: it supposes operations to be performed 
and relations to exist of which we see nothing that 
bears the least resemblance in any thing we know* 
But secondly^ the doctrine of the materialists in 



68 

every form which it assumes is contradicted by the 
most plain and certain deductions of experience. The 
evidence which we have of the existence of the mind 
is complete in itself, and wholly independent of the 
qualities or the existence of matter. It is not only 
as strong and conclusive as the evidence which 
makes us believe in the existence of matter, but more 
strong and more conclusive; the steps of the demon- 
stration are fewer; the truth to which they conduct 
the reason is less remote from the axiom — the intui- 
tive or self-evident position whence the demonstra- 
tion springs. We believe that matter exists because 
it makes a certain impression upon our senses, that 
is, because it produces a certain change or a certain 
effect, and we argue, and argue justly, that this effect 
must have a cause, though the proof is, by no means, 
so clear that this cause is something external to our- 
selves. But we know the existence of mind by our 
consciousness of, or reflection on what passes within 
us, and our own existence as sentient and thinking 
beings implies the existence of the mind which has 
sense and thought. To know, therefore, that we are, 
and that we think, implies a knowledge of the soul's 
existence. But this knowledge is altogether indepen- 
dent of matter, and the subject of it bears no resem- 
blance whatever to matter in any one of its qualities, 
or habits, or modes of action. Nay, we only know 
the existence of matter through the operations of the 
mind; and were we to doubt of the existence of either, 
it would be far more reasonable to doubt that matter 
exists than that mind exists. The existence and the 
operations of mind, supposing it to exist, will account 
for all the phenomena which matter is supposed to ex- 
hibit. But the existence and action of matter, vary 
it how we may, will never account for one of the 
phenomena of mind. We do not believe more firmly 
in the existence of the sensible objects around us 
when we are well and awake, than we do in the re- 
ality of those phantoms which the imagination con- 



69 

jures up in the hours of sleep, or the season of de- 
rangement. But no effect produced by material 
agency ever produced a spiritual existence, or engen- 
dered the belief of such an existence; indeed, the 
thing is almost a contradiction in terms. That all 
around us should only be the creatures of our fancy, 
no one can affirm to be impossible. But that our 
mind — that which remembers — compares — imagines 
— in a word, that which thinks — that of the existence 
of which we are perpetually conscious — that which 
cannot but exist, if we exist — that which can make 
its own operations the subject of its own thoughts 
— that this should have no existence is both impos- 
sible, and, indeed, a contradiction in terms. We 
have, therefore, evidence of the strictest kind — in- 
duction of facts the most precise and unerring — to 
justify the conclusion that the mind exists, and is 
different from and independent of matter altogether.^ 

Now this proposition not only destroys the doc- 
trine of the materialists, but leads to the strongest in- 
ferences in favour of the mind surviving the body 
with which it is connected through life. All our ex- 
perience shows us no one instance of annihilation. 
Matter is perpetually changing — never destroyed; 
the form and manner of its existence is endlessly and 
ceaselessly varying — its existence never terminates. 
The body decays, and is said to perish; that is, it is 
resolved into its elements, and becomes the material 
of new combinations, animate and inanimate, but not 
a single particle of it is annihilated; nothing of us or 
around us ever ceases to exist. If the mind perishes, 
or ceases to exist at death, it is the only example of 
annihilation which we know. 

But, it may be said, why should it not, like the 
body, be changed, or dissipated, or resolved into its 
elements? The answer is plain: it differs from the 
body in this, that it has no parts; it is absolutely one 

* See on the Hypothesis of Materialism — ^Note IV. 
7 



70 

and simple; therefore, it is incapable of resolution or 
dissolution. These words, and the operations or 
events they refer to, have no application to a simple 
and immaterial existence. 

Indeed, our idea of annihilation is wholly derived 
from matter, and what we are wont to call destruc- 
tion means only change of form and resolution into 
parts, or combination into new forms. But for the 
example of the changes undergone by matter, we 
should not even have any notion of destruction or 
annihilation. When we come to consider the thing 
itself, we cannot conceive it to be possible; we can 
well imagine a parcel of gunpowder or any other 
combustible substance ceasing to exist as such by 
burning or exploding; but that its whole elements 
should not continue to exist in a different state, and 
in new combinations, appears inconceivable. We 
cannot follow the process so far; we can form no con- 
ception of any one particle that once is, ceasing 
wholly to be. How then can we form any conception 
of the mind which we now know to exist ceasing to 
be? It is an idea altogether above our comprehen- 
sion. True, we no longer, after the body is dis- 
solved, perceive the mind, because we never knew it 
by the senses; we only were aware of its existence in 
others by its effects upon matter, and had no expe- 
rience of it unconnected with the body. But it by no 
means follows that it should not exist, merely because 
we have ceased to perceive its effects upon any por- 
tion of matter. It had connexion with the matter 
which it used to act upon, and by which it used to 
be acted on; when its entire severance took place that 
matter underwent a great change, but a change 
arising from its being of a composite nature. The 
same separation cannot have affected the mind in the 
like manner, because its nature is simple and not com- 
posite. Our ceasing to perceive any effects produced 
by it on any portion of matter, the only means we 
can have of ascertaining its existence, is, therefore, no 



71 

proof that it does not still exist; and even if we ad- 
mit that it no longer does produce any effect upon 
any portion of matter, still this will offer no proof 
that it has ceased to exist. Indeed, when we speak 
of its being annihilated we may be said to use a word 
to which no precise meaning can be attached by our 
imaginations. At any rate, it is much more difficult 
to suppose that this annihilation has taken place, and 
to conceive in what way it is effected, than to suppose 
that the mind continues in some state of separate ex- 
istence, disencumbered of the body, and to conceive 
in what manner this separate existence is maintained. 

It may be further observed that the material world 
affords no example of creation, any more than of an- 
nihilation. Such as it was in point of quantity since 
its existence began, such it still is, not a single particle 
of matter having been either added to it or taken from 
it. Change — unceasing change — in all its parts, at 
every instant of time, it is for ever undergoing; but 
though the combinations or relations of these parts are 
unremittingly varying, there has not been a single one 
of them created, or a single one destroyed. Of mind, 
this cannot be said; it is called into existence per- 
petually, before our eyes. In one respect this may 
weaken the argument for the continued existence of 
the soul, because it may lead to the conclusion, that as 
we see mind created, so may it be destroyed; while 
matter, which suffers no addition, is liable to no loss. 
Yet the argument seems to gain in another direction 
more force than it loses in this; for nothing can more 
strongly illustrate the diversity between mind and mat- 
ter, or more strikingly show that the one is indepen- 
dent of the other. 

Again, the mind's independence of matter and capa- 
city of existence without it, appears to be strongly il- 
lustrated by whatever shows the entire dissimilarity of 
its constitution. The inconceivable rapidity of its ope- 
rations is, perhaps, the most striking feature of the di- 
versity; and there is no doubt that this rapidity in- 
creases in proportion as the interference of the senses 



72 

»— that is, the influence of the body — is withdrawn. 
A multitude of facts, chiefly drawn from and connected 
with the Phenomena of Dreams, throw a strong hght 
upon this subject, and seem to demonstrate the possi- 
ble disconnexion of mind and matter. 

The bodily functions are in part suspended during 
sleep, that is, all those which depend upon volition. 
The senses, however, retain a portion of their acute- 
ness; and those of touch* and hearing especially, may 
be aflfected without awakening the sleeper. The con- 
sequence of the cessation which takes place of all com- 
munication of ideas through the senses, is that the ac- 
tion of the mind, and, above all, of those powers connect- 
ed with the imagination, becomes much more vigorous 
and uninterrupted. This is shown in two ways — first, 
by the celerity with which any impression upon the 
senses, strong enough to be felt without awaking, is 
caught up and made the groundwork of a new train 
of ideas, the mind instantly accommodating itself to the 
suggestions of the impression, and making all its thoughts 
chime in with that; and, secondly, by the prodigiously 
long succession of images that pass through the mind, 
with perfect distinctness and liveliness, in an instant of 
time. 

The facts upon this subject are numerous, and of un- 
deniable certainty, because of daily occurence. Every 
one knows the effect of a bottle of hot water applied 
during sleep to the soles of the feet: you instantly dream 
of walking over hot mould, or ashes, or a stream of 
lava, or having your feet burnt by coming too near the 
fire. But the effect of falling asleep in a stream of cold 
air, as in an open carriage, varies this experiment in a 
very interesting, and indeed, instructive manner. You 
will, instantly that the wind begins to blow, dream of 
being upon some exposed point, and anxious for shel* 
ter, but unable to reach it ; then you are on the deck 

* The common classification of the senses which makes the touch 
comprehend the sense of heat and cold, is here adopted; thoug-h^ 
certainly, there seems almost as little reason for ranging* this under 
touch, as for ranging* sight, smell, hearing, ?^nd taste under the sam© 
head. 



73 

of a ship, suffering from the gale — you run behind a 
sail for shelter, and the wind changes, so that it still 
blows upon you — you are driven to the cabin, but the 
ladder is removed, or the door locked. Presently you 
are on shore, in a house with all the windows open, 
and endeavour to shut them in vain; or, seeing a smith's 
forge, you are attracted by the fire, and suddenly a hun- 
dred bellows play upon it, and extinguish it in an in- 
stant, but fill the whole smithy with their blast, till 
you are as cold as on the road. If you from time to 
time awake, the moment you fall asleep again, the 
same course of dreaming succeeds in the greatest va- 
riety of changes that can be rung on our thoughts. 

But the rapidity of these changes, and of the suc- 
cession of ideas, cannot be ascertained by this experi- 
ment: it is most satisfactorily proved by another. Let 
any one who is extremely overpowered with drowsi- 
ness — as after sitting up all night, and sleeping none 
the next day — lie down, and begin to dictate: he will 
find himself falling asleep after uttering a few words, 
and he will be awakened by the person who writes re- 
peating the last word, to show he has written the whole ; 
not above five or six seconds may elapse, and the sleep- 
er will find it at first quite impossible to believe that 
he has not been asleep for hours, and will chide the 
amanuensis for having fallen asleep over his work — 
so great apparently will be the length of the dream 
which he has dreamt, extending through half a life- 
time. This experiment is easily tried: again and again 
the sleeper will find his endless dream renewed; and 
he will always be able to tell in how short a time he 
must have performed it. For suppose eight or ten se- 
conds required to write the four or five words dictated, 
sleep could hardly begin in less than four or five seconds 
after the effort of pronouncing the sentence; so that, 
at the utmost, not more than four or five seconds can 
have been spent in sleep. But, indeed, the greater 
probability is, that not above a single second can have 
been so passed; for a writer will easily finish two 

7* 



74 

words in a second ; and suppose he has to write four, 
and half the time is consumed in faUing asleep, one 
second only is the duration of the dream, which yet 
seems to last for years, so numerous are the images 
that compose it. 

Another experiment is still more striking, and affords 
a more remarkable proof both of the velocity of thought, 
and of the quickness with which its course is moulded 
to suit any external impression made on the senses. 
But this experiment is not^so easily tried. A puncture 
made will immediately produce a long dream, which 
seems to terminate in some such accident as that the 
sleeper has been wandering through a wood, and re- 
ceived a severe wound from a spear, or the tooth of a 
wild animal, which at the same instant awakens him. 
A gun fired in one instance, during the alarm of inva- 
sion, made a military man at once dream the enemj' 
had landed, so that he ran to his post, and repairing to 
the scene of action, was present when the first discharge 
took place, which also the same moment awakened 
him.* 

Now these facts show the infinite rapidity of thought; 
for the puncture and the discharge of the gun took 
place in an instant, and their impression on the senses 
was as instantaneous; and yet, during that instant, the 
mind went through a long operation of fancy suggested 
by the first part of the impression, and terminated, as 
the sleep itself was, by the continuation — the last por- 
tion of the same impression. Mark what was done in 
an instant — in a mere point of time. The sensation of 
the pain or noise beginning is conveyed to the mind, 
and sets it a thinking of many things connected with 
such sensations. But that sensation is lost or forgot- 
ten for a portion of the short instant during which 
the impression lasts; for the conclusion of the same im- 
pression gives rise to a new set of ideas. The walk in 

* The ingenious Eastern tale, in the Spectator, of the magician 
who made the prince plunge his head into a pail of water, is founded 
on facts like those to which we have been referring. 



75 

the wood, and the hurrying to the post, are suggested 
by the sensation beginning. Then follow many things 
unconnected with that sensation, except that they 
grew out of it; and, lastly, comes the wound, and the 
broadside, suggested by the continuance of the sensa- 
tion, while, all the time, this continuance has been pro- 
ducing an effect on the mind wholly different from the 
train of ideas the dream consists of, nay, destructive of 
that train — namely, the effect of rousing it from the 
state of sleep, and restoring its dominion over the body. 
Nay, there may be said to be a third operation of the 
mind going on at the same time with these two — a 
looking .|brw^ard to the denouement of the plot, — for the 
fancy is all along so contriving as to fit that, by 
terminating in some event, some result consistent with 
the impression made on the senses, and which has 
given rise to the whole train of ideas. 

There seems every reason to conclude, from these 
facts, that we only dream during the instant of transi- 
tion into and out of sleep. That instant is quite 
enough to account for the whole of what appears a 
night's dream. It is quite certain we remember no 
more than ought, according to these experiments, to 
fill an instant of time ; and there can be no reason why 
we should only recollect this one portion if we had 
dreamt much more. The fact that we never dream 
so much as when our rest is frequently broken proves 
the same proposition almost* to demonstration. An un- 
easy and restless night passed in bed is always a night 
studded full with dreams. So, too, a night passed on 
the road in travelling, by such as sleep well in a 
carriage, is a night of constant dreams. Every jolt 
that awakens or half-awakens us seems to be the cause 
of a dream. If it be said that we always or generally 
dream when asleep, but only recollect a portion of our 
dream, then the question arises, why we recollect a 
dream each time we fall asleep, or are awakened, and 
no more ? If we can recall twenty dreams in a night 
of interrupted sleep, how is it that we can only recall 
one or two when our sleep is continued ? The length 



76 

of time occupied by the dream we recollect is the only 
reason that can be given for our forgetting the rest; 
but this reason fails if, each time we are roused, we 
remember separate dreams. 

Nothing can be conceived better calculated than 
these facts to demonstrate the extreme agility of the 
mental powers, their total diversity from any material 
substances or actions; nothing better adapted to satisfy 
us that the nature of the mind is consistent with its 
existence apart from the body* 

The changes which the mind undergoes in its ac» 
tivity, its capacity, its mode of operation, are matter of 
constant observation, indeed of every man's experience. 
Its essence is the same ; its fundamental nature is un- 
alterable; it never loses the distinguishing peculiarities 
which separate it from matter ; never acquires any of 
the properties of the latter ; but it undergoes import* 
ant changes, both in the progress of time, and by 
means of exercise and culture. The development of 
the bodily powers appears to affect it, and so does their 
decay; but we rather ought to say, that, in ordinary 
cases, its improvement is contemporaneous with the 
growth of the body, and its decline generally is con* 
temporaneous with that of the body, after an advanced 
period of life. For it is an undoubted fact, and almost 
universally true, that the mind, before extreme old 
age, becomes more sound, and is capable of greater 
things, during nearly thirty years of diminished bodily 
powers; that, in most cases, it suffers no abatement of 
strength during ten years more of bodily decline; that, 
in many cases, a few years more of bodily decrepitude 
produce no effect upon the mind ; and that in some in- 
stances, its faculties remain bright to the last, sur- 
viving the almost total extinction of the corporeal en- 
dowments. It is certain that the strength of the body, 
its agility, its patience of fatigue, indeed all its quali- 
ties, decline from thirty at the latest; and yet the 
mind is improving rapidly from thirty to fifty; suffers 
little or no decline before sixty ; and therefore is better 
when the body is enfeebled, at the age of fifty-eight or 



77 

fifty-nine, than it was in the acme of the corporeal fa- 
culties thirty years before. It is equally certain, that 
while the body is rapidly decaying, between sixty or 
sixty-three and seventy, the mind suffers hardly any 
loss of strength in the generality of men ; that men con- 
tinue to seventy-five or seventy-six in the possession of all 
their mental powers, while few can boast then of more 
than the remains of physical strength; and instances 
are not wanting of persons who, between eighty and 
ninety, or even older, when the body can hardly be 
said to live, possess every faculty of the mind unim- 
paired. We are authorized to conclude, from these 
facts, that unless some unusual and violent accident in- 
terferes, such as a serious illness or a fatal contusion, 
the ordinary course of life presents the mind and the 
body running courses widely different, and in great 
part of the time in opposite directions; and this affords 
strong proof, both that the mind is independent of the 
body, and that its destruction in the period of its entire 
vigour is contrary to the analogy of nature. 

The strongest of all the arguments both for the sepa- 
rate existence of mind, and for its surviving the body 
remains, and it is drawn from the strictest induction of 
facts. The body is constantly undergoing change in 
all its parts. Probably no person at the age of twenty 
has one single particle in any part of his body which 
he had at ten ; and still less does any portion of the 
body he was born with continue to exist in or with him. 
All that he before had has now entered into new com- 
binations, forming parts of other men, or of animals, or 
of vegetables or mineral substances, exactly as the 
body he now has will afterwards be resolved into new 
combinations after his death. Yet the mind continues 
one and the same, ^' without change or shadow of turn- 
ing." None of its parts can be resolved ; for it is one 
and single, and it remains unchanged by the changes 
of the body. The argument would be quite as strong 
though the change undergone by the body were ad- 
mitted not to be so complete, and though some small 



78 

portion of its harder parts were supposed to continue 
with us through Hfe. 

But observe how strong the inferences arising from 
these facts are, both to prove that the existence of the 
mind is entirely independent of the existence of the body, 
and to show the probability of its surviving 1 If the 
mind continues the same while all or nearly all the body 
is changed, it follows that the existence of the mind de- 
pends not in the least degree upon the existence of the 
body; for it has already survived a total change of, or, 
in the common use of the words, an entire destruction 
of that body. But again, if the strongest argument to 
show that the mind perishes with the body, nay, the 
only argument be, as it indubitably is, derived from the 
phenomena of death, the fact to which we have been 
referring affords an answer to this. For the argument 
is that we know of no instance in which the mind has 
ever been known to exist after the death of the body. 
Now here is exactly the instance desiderated, it being 
manifest that the same process which takes place on 
the body more suddenly at death is taking place 
more gradually, but as effectually in the result, during 
the whole of life, and that death itself does not more 
completely resolve the body into its elements and form 
it into new combinations than living fifteen or twenty 
years does destroy, by like resolution and combination, 
the self-same body. And yet after those years have 
elapsed, and the former body has been dissipated and 
formed into new combinations, the mind remains the 
same as before, exercising the same memory and con- 
sciousness, and so preserving the same personal identity 
as if the body had suffered no change at all. In short, 
it is not more correct to say that all of us who are now 
living have bodies formed of what were once the bodies 
of those who went before us, than it is to say that some 
of us who are now living at the age of fifty have bo- 
dies which in part belonged to others now living at 
that and other ages. The phenomena are precisely 
the same, and the operations are performed in like 



79 

manner, though with different degrees of expedition. 
Now all would believe in the separate existence of the 
soul if they had experience of its existing apart from 
the body. But the facts referred to prove that it does 
exist apart from one body with which it once was 
united, and though it is in union with another, yet as 
it is not adherent to the same, it is shown to have an 
existence separate from, and independent of that body. 
So all would believe in the soul surviving the body, if 
after the body's death its existence were made mani- 
fest. But the facts referred to prove that after the 
body's death, that is, after the chronic dissolution which 
the body undergoes during life, the mind continues to 
exist as before. Here, then, we have that proof so 
much desiderated — the existence of the soul after the 
dissolution of the bodily frame with which it was con- 
nected. The two cases cannot, in any soundness of 
reasoning, be distinguished : and this argument, there- 
fore, one of pure induction, derived partly from physi- 
cal science, through the evidence of our senses, partly 
from psychological science by the testimony of our 
consciousness, appears to prove the possible Immor- 
tality of the Soul almost as rigorously as " if one were 
to rise from the dead." 

Now we have gone through the first division of this 
second branch of the subject, and have considered the 
proofs of the separate and future existence of the soul 
afforded by the nature of mind. It is quite clear that 
all of them are derived from a strict induction of facts, 
and that the doctrines rest upon precisely the same 
kind of evidence with that upon which the doctrines 
respecting the constitution and habits of the mind are 
founded. In truth, the subjects are not to be distin- 
guished as regards the species of demonstration appli- 
cable to them — the process by which the investigation 
of them is to be conducted. That mind has an exist- 
ence perceivable and demonstrable as well as matter, 
and that it is wholly different from matter in its quali- 
ties, is a truth proved by induction of facts. That 



80 

mind can exist independent of matter and survive the 
dissolution of the body, is a truth proved exactly in the 
same manner, by induction of facts. The phenomena 
of dreams which lead to important conclusions touching 
the nature of the mind, lead, and by the self-same kind 
of reasoning, to important conclusions of a similar de- 
scription, touching the mind's existence independent of 
the body. The facts, partly physical, partly psycho- 
logical, which show the mind to be unaffected by the 
decay and by even the total though gradual change of 
the body during life, likewise show that it can exist 
after the more sudden change of a similar kind, which 
we term the dissolution of the body by death. There 
is no means of separating the two classes of truths^ 
those of Psychology and those of Natural Theology; 
they are parts of one and the same science ; they are 
ascertained by one and the same process of investiga- 
tion ; they repose upon one and the same kind of evi- 
dence; nor can any person, without giving way to a 
most groundless and unphilosophical prejudice, profess 
his belief in the former doctrines, and reject the latter. 
The only difference between the two is that the Theo- 
logical propositions are of much greater importance to 
human happiness than the Metaphysical. 



II. MORAL ARGCMENT, OR EVIDENCE OF THE DEITY S DE- 
SIGNS DRAWN FROM HIS ATTRIBUTES IN CONNEXION 
WITH THE CONDITION CF THE SPECIES. 

The probable designs of Divine Providence with re- 
spect to the future lot of man are to be gathered in 
part from the nature of the mind itself, the work of 
the Deity, and in part from the attributes of the Deity, 
ascertained by an examination of his whole works. It 
thus happens that a portion of this head of the argu- 
ment has been anticipated in treating the other head, 
the nature of the mind. Whatever qualities of the 
soul show it to differ from matter, both make it im- 



81 

probable that it should perish^with the body, and make 
it improbable that the Deity should destine it to such 
a catastrophe; and whatever facts show that it can 
survive a total change of the body during life, show, 
likewise, the probability that the same being who en- 
dowed it with that capacity will suffer it, in like man- 
ner, to continue in being after the more sudden change 
which the body undergoes at death. 

The argument built upon the supposed designs of 
the Creator requires to be handled in an humble and 
submissive spirit; but, if so undertaken, there is no- 
thing in it which can be charged with presumption, or 
deemed inconsistent with perfect though rational de- 
votion. In truth, all the investigations of Natural 
Theology are equally liable to such a charge; for to 
trace the evidences of design in the works of nature, 
and inquire how far benevolence presides over their 
formation and maintenance — in other words, to deduce 
from what we see, the existence of the Deity, and 
speculate upon His wisdom and goodness in the crea- 
tion and government of the universe — is just as daring 
a thing, and exactly of the same kind of audacity, as 
to speculate upon His probable intentions with respect 
to the future destiny of man. 

The contemplation of the Deity's goodness, as dedu- 
cible from the great preponderance of instances in 
which benevolent design is exhibited, when accompa- 
nied with a consideration of the feelings and wishes of 
the human mind, gives rise to the first argument which 
is usually adduced in favour of the Immortality of the 
Soul. There is nothing more universal or more con- 
stant than the strong desire of immortality which pos- 
sesses the mind, and compared with w^hich its other 
wishes and solicitudes are but faint and occasional. 
That a benevolent being should have implanted this 
propensity without the intention of gratifying it, and 
to serve no very apparent purpose, unless it be the 
proving that it is without an object, appears difficult 
to believe : for certainly the instinctive fear of death 

8 



82 

would have served all the purposes of self-preservation 
without any desire of immortality being connected 
with it, although there can be no doubt that this de- 
sire, or at least the anxiety about our future destiny, 
is intimately related to our dread of dissolution. But 
the inference acquires additional strength from the 
consideration that the faculties of the mind ripen and 
improve almost to the time of the body's extinction, 
and that the destruction of the soul at the moment of 
its being fitter than ever for worthy things seems quite 
inconceivable. 

The tender affections so strongly and so universally 
operating in our nature afford another argument of a 
like kind. No doubt the purpose to which they are 
subservient in this life is much more distinctly percei- 
vable ; yet still it is inconsistent with the provisions of 
a benevolent Power to suppose that we should be made 
susceptible of such vehement feelings, and be suffered 
to indulge in them, so as to make our happiness chiefly 
consist in their gratification, and that then we should 
suddenly be made to undergo the bitter pangs of se- 
paration, while, by our surviving^, those pains are 
lengthened out without any useful effect resulting 
from our sufferings. That such separations should be 
eternal appears irreconcilable with the strength of the 
affections wounded, and with the goodness so generally 
perceived in the order of the universe. The supposi- 
tion of a re-union hereafter overcomes the difficulty, 
and reconciles the apparent inconsistency. 

The unequal distribution of rewards and punish- 
ments in this world, that is, the misery in which virtue 
often exists, and the prosperity not seldom attendant 
upon vice, can in no way be so well accounted for, 
consistently with the scheme of a benevolent Provi- 
dence, as by the supposition of a Future State. 

But perhaps there is nothing more strongly indica- 
tive of such a design in the Creator than the universal 
prevalence of religion amongst men. There can hardly 
be found a tribe so dark and barbarous as to be with- 



83 

out some kind of worship, and some belief in a future 
state of existence. Now all religions are so far of God 
that he permits them; he made and preserves the fa- 
culties which have invented the false ones, as well as 
those which comprehend and treasure up the true 
faith. Religious belief, religious observance, the look- 
ing forward to a future existence, and pointing to a 
condition in which the deeds done on earth shall be 
visited with just recompense, are all facts of universal 
occurrence in the history and intellectual habits of the 
species. Are they all a mere fiction? Do they indeed 
signify nothing? Is that a mere groundless fancy, which 
in all places, in all ages^ occupies and has occupied the 
thoughts, and mingled itself with the actions of all 
mankind, whether barbarous or refined?* 

But if it be said that the belief of such a state is 
subservient to an important use, the restraining the 
passions and elevating the feelings, it is obvious to 
reply that so great a mechanism to produce this ef- 
fect very imperfectly and precariously, appears little 
consistent with the ordinary efficacy and simplicity 
of the works of Providence, and that the disposition 
to shun vice and debasement could have been more 
easily and more certainly implanted by making them 
disgusting. True, there would then have been little 
merit in the restraint; but of what value is the pro- 
duction of such merit, if the mind which attains it and 
becomes adorned by it has no sooner approached per- 
fection than it ceases to exist at all? The supposition 
of a Future State at once reconciles all inconsistencies 
here as before, and enables us to comprehend why 
virtue is taught by the hopes of another life, as well 
as why those hopes, and the grounds they rest on, form 
so large a portion of human contemplation. 

That the existence of the soul in a new state after 
the entire dissolution of the body — nay, that the ex- 

• Not^ VIII. and IX, 



84 

istence of the body itself in a new state, after passing 
through death, is nothing contrary to the analogies 
which nature presents, has been oftentimes observed, 
and is a topic much dwelt upon, especially by the an- 
cient philosophers. The extraordinary transforma- 
tions which insects undergo have struck men's ima- 
ginations so powerfully in contemplating this subject, 
that the soul itself was deemed of old to be aptly de- 
signated under the emblematical form of a butterfly, 
which having emerged from the chrysalis state, flut- 
ters in the air, instead of continuing to crawl on the 
earth, as it did before the worm it once was ceased to 
exist. The instance of the foetus of animals, and 
especially of the human embryo, has occupied the at- 
tention of modern inquirers into this interesting sub- 
ject. Marking the entire difference in one state of 
existence before and after birth, and the diversity of 
every one animal function at these two periods, phi- 
losophers have inferred, that, as, on passing from the 
one to the other state of existence so mighty a change 
is wrought, without any destruction either of the soul 
or body, a like transition may take place at death, 
and the event which appears to close our being may 
only open the portals of a new, and higher, and more 
lasting condition. As far as such considerations sug- 
gest analogies, they furnish a matter of pleasing con- 
templation, perhaps lend even some ilkistration to 
the argum.ent. Nevertheless, they must be regard- 
ed as exceedingly feeble helps in this latter respect, 
if indeed their aid be not of a doubtful, and even dan- 
gerous kind. They are all drawn from material ob- 
jects, — all rest upon the properties and the fortunes 
of corporeal existences. Now the stronghold of those 
who maintain the Immortality of the Soul, and, in- 
deed, all the doctrines of Natural Theology, is the 
entire difference between mind and matter, and the 
proofs we have constantly around us, and within us, 
of existences as real as the bodies which affect our 



85 

outward senses, but resembling those perishable things 
in no one quality, no one habit of action, no one mode 
of being. 

Upon the particulars of a future state — the kind of 
existence reserved for the soul — the species of its oc- 
cupations and enjoyments — Natural Theology is, of 
course, profoundly silent, but not more silent than 
Revelation. We are left wholly to conjecture, and 
in a field on which our hopelessness of attaining any 
certain result is quite equal to our interest in the suc- 
cess of the search. Indeed, all our ideas of happiness 
in this world are such as rather to disqualify us for 
the investigation or what may more fitly be termed 
the imagination. Those ideas are, for the most part, 
either directly connected with the senses, or derived 
from our condition of weakness here which occasions 
the formation of connexions for mutual comfort and 
support, and gives to the feebler party the feeling of 
allegiance, to the stronger the pleasure of protection. 
Yet may we conceive that, hereafter, such of our af- 
fections as have been the most cherished in life shall 
survive and form again the delight of meeting those 
from whom death has severed us — that the soul may 
enjoy the purest delights in the exercise of its powers, 
above all for the investigation of truth— that it may 
expatiate in the full discovery of whatever has hither- 
to been most sparingly revealed, or most carefully 
hidden from its view — that it may be gratified with 
the sight of the useful harvest reaped by the world 
from the good seed which it helped to sow. We 
can only conjecture or fancy. But these, and such 
as these, are pleasures in which the gross indulgences 
of sense have no part, and which are even removed 
above the less refined of our moral gratifications: they 
may, therefore, be supposed consistent with a pure 
and faultless state of spiritual being. 

Perhaps the greatest of all the difficulties which we 
feel in forming such conjectures, regards the endless 

8* 



86 

duration of an immortal existence. All our ideas in 
this world are so adapted to a limited continuance of 
life — not only so moulded upon the scheme of a being 
incapable of lasting beyond a few years, but so inse- 
parably connected with a constant change even here — 
a perpetual termination of one stage of existence and 
beginning of another — that we cannot easily, if at all, 
fancy an eternal, or even a long-continued, endurance 
of the same faculties, the same pursuits, and the same 
enjoyments. All here is in perpetual movement — 
ceaseless change. There is nothing in us or about us 
that abides an hour — nay, an instant. Resting-place 
there is none for the foot — no haven is provided 
where the mind may be still. How then shall a 
creature, thus wholly ignorant of repose — unacquaint- 
ed with any continuation at all in any portion of his 
existence — so far abstract his thoughts from his whole 
experience as to conceive a long, much more a per- 
petual, duration of the same powers, pursuits, feelings, 
pleasures? Here it is that we are the nriost lost in 
our endeavours to reach the seats of the blessed with 
our imperfect organs of perception, and our inveterate 
and only habits of thinking.^ 

It remains to observe, that all the speculations upon 
which we have touched under this second subdivision 

* The part of Dean Swift's satire which relates to the Stulhrugs 
may possibly occur to some readers as bearing' upon this topic. 
That the stanch admirers of that sing-ularly gifted person should 
have been flung into ecstasies on the perusal of this extraordinary 
part of his writings, needs not surprise us. Their raptures were 
full easily excited; but I am quite clear they have given a wrong 
gloss to it, and heaped upon its merits a very undeserved praise. 
They think that the picture of the Stulbrugs was intended to wean 
us from a love of life, and that it has well accomplished its purpose. 
I am very certain that the Dean n^ver had any sucli thing in view, 
because his sagacity was far too great not to perceive that he only 
could make out this position by a most undisguised beg'ging of the 
question. How could any man of the most ordinary reflection ex- 
pect to wean his fellow-creatures from love of life by describing a 
sort of persons who at a given age lost their faculties, and became 



87 

of the subject, the moral argument, are similar to the 
doctrines of inductive science — at least to such of 
those doctrines as are less perfectly ascertained; but 
the investigation is conducted upon the same princi- 
ples. The most satisfactory proofs of the souFs im- 
mortality are those of the first, or psychological class, 
derived from studying the nature of mind; those of 
the second class which we have last been surveying, 
derived from the condition of man in connexion w^ith 
the attributes of the Deity, are less distinct and 
cogent; nor would they be sufficient of themselves; 
but they add important confirmation to the others; 
and both are as truly parts of legitimate inductive 
science as an}^ branch — we may rather say, any other 
branch — of moral philosophy. 

doting", drivelling" idiots? Did any man breathing ever pretend 
that he wished to live, not only for centuries, but even for three- 
score years and ten, bereaved of his understanding", and treated by 
the law and by his fellow men as in hopeless, incurable dotage? 
The passage in question is much more likely to have proceeded 
from Swift's exaggerated misanthropy, and to have been designed 
as an antidote to human pride, by showing that our duration is neces- 
sarily limited — if, indeed, it is not rather to be regarded as the 
work of mere whim and caprice. 



88 



SECTION VI. 

LORD bacon's doctrine OF FINAL CAUSES.* 

It now appears, that when we said that Natural 
Theology can no more be distinguished from the phy- 
sical, psychological, and ethical sciences, in respect 
of the evidence it rests upon and the manner in which 
its investigations are to be conducted, than the diffe- 
rent department of those sciences can be distinguished 
from each other in the like respect, we were only 
making an assertion borne out by a close and rigorous 
examination of the subject. How, then, comes it to 
pass, it may be asked, that the father of Inductive 
Philosophy has banished the speculation of Final 
Causes from his system, as if it were no branch of in- 
ductive science? A more attentive consideration of 
the question will show, Jirst, that the sentence which 
he pronounced has been not a little misunderstood 
by persons who looked only at particular aphorisms, 
without duly regarding the context and the occasion; 
and, secondly^ that Lord Bacon may very probably 
have conceived a prejudice against the subject alto- 
gether, from the abuses, or indeed perversions, to 
which a misplaced affection for it had given rise in 
some of the ancient schools of philosophy. 

That Lord Bacon speaks disparagingly of the inqui- 
ry concerning final causes, both when he handles it 
didactically, and when he mentions it incidentally, is 
admitted. He enumerates it among the errors that 
spring from the restlessness of mind {impotentia 
mentis^ which formes the fourth class of the idols of 
the species {idola tribus^) or causes of false philoso- 
phy connected with the peculiarities of the human 

* Note X. 



89 

constitution.* In other parts of the same work he 
descants upon the mischiefs which have arisen in the 
schools from mixing the doctrines of natural religion 
with those of natural pilosophy;t and he more than 
once treats of the inquiry concerning final causes as 
a barren speculation, comparing it to a nun or a ves- 
tal consecrated to heaven. J But a nearer examina- 
tion of this great authority will show that it is not 
adverse to our doctrine. 

1. First of all it is to be remarked, that Lord Ba- 
con does not disapprove of the speculation concerning 
final causes absolutely, and does not undervalue the 
doctrines of Natural Religion, so long as that specu- 
lation and those doctrines are kept in their proper 
place. His whole writings bear testimony to the 
truth of this proposition. In the Farasceve to na- 
tural and experimental history, which closes the No- 
vum Orgamun^ he calls the history of the pheno- 
mena of nature a volume of the work of God, and as 
it were another Bible — "volurnen operum Dei,ettan- 
quam altera scriptura.^'§ In the first book of the De 
Dignitate^ he says there are two books of religion to 
be consulted — the scriptures, to tell the will of God, 
and the book of creation, to show his power. || Ac- 
cordingly he maintains elsewhere,^ that a miracle was 
never yet performed to convert atheists, because these 
might always arrive at the knowledge of a Deity by 
the light of nature. Nor ought we to pass over the 
remarkable passage of the Cogitata et Visa, in which 
he propounds the use of Natural Philosophy as the 
cure for superstition and the support of true religion. 
''Naturalem Philosophiam, post verbum Dei, certis- 
simam superstitionis medicinam, eandem probaptissi- 
mam, fidei alimentum esse. Itaque merito religioni 
tanquam fidatissimam et acceptissimam ancillam at- 

* Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 48, 
t lb. Aph. 96; and De Dig. et Aug. lib. i. 

i " Sterilis et tanquam virgo deo sacra non parit.'* c. 5. De Dig.. 
lib. iii. 

§ Parasceve, c. 9. J Lib . i. 1 lb. lib. iii. c. 13. 



90 

tribui, cum altera voluntatem Del^ altera potestatem 
manifestet/^* If the earlier part of the passage left 
any doubt of the kind of service which religion was 
to derive from inductive science, the last words clear- 
ly show that it could only be by the doctrine of final 
causes. 

2. But further, he distinctly classes natural reli- 
gion among the branches of legitimate science; audit 
is of great and decisive importance to our present in- 
quiry that we should mark the particular place which 
he assigns to it. He first divides science into two 
great branches, Theology and Philosophy — compre- 
hending under the former description only the doc- 
trines of revelation, and under the latter all human 
science. Now after expressly excluding Natural Re- 
ligion! from the first class, he treats it as a part of the 
second. The second, or philosophy, is divided into 
three parts, according as its object is the Deity, Na- 
ture, or Man. The first of these subdivisions consti- 
tutes Natural Religion, which he says may be termed 
Divine knowledge, if you regard its object, but Na- 
tural knowledge, if you consider its nature and evi- 
dence, (^^ratione informationis scientia naturalis cen- 
seri potest.'^t) That he places it in a difierent sub- 
division from Natural Philosophy proves nothing; 
for he classes anatomy, medicine, and intellectual 
philosophy also in a different subdivision: they come 
under the head of Human Philosophy, or the science 
of man, as contradistinguished from Natural Theology 
and Natural Philosophy, or the science of God and 
of external objects. Many objections may undoubt- 
edly be made to this classification, of which it is per- 
haps enough to say, that it leads to separating optics 
as well as anatomy and medicine § from natural phi- 
losophy. But, at all events, it shows both that Lord 

* Francisci Baconi, Cogitata et Visa. 
f De Dig. lib. iii. c. 1. 
+ De Dig. lib. iii. c. 2. 

§ lb, lib. iv. c. 3. He treats of the desiderata in optics, under the 
head of the human mind — the senses. 



91 

Bacon deemed Natural Theology a fit object of phi- 
losophical inquiry, and that he regarded the inductive 
method as furnishing the means by which the inquiry 
was to be conducted. 

3. The general censure upon the doctrine of final 
causes to which we have in the outset adverted, as 
conveyed by certain incidental remarks, is manifestly 
directed against the abuse of such speculations, and 
mare especially in the ancient schools of philosophy. 
Lord Bacon justly objects to the confounding of final 
wdth efficient or physical causes ; he marks the loose 
and figurative language to which this confusion has 
given rise; he asks if it is philosophical to describe the 
eye as Aristotle, Galen, and others do, with the eyelids 
and eyelashes as a wall and a hedge to protect it ; or 
the bones as so many beams and pillars to support the 
body ;* and he is naturally apprehensive of the danger 
which may result from men introducing fancies of their 
own into science, and above all, from their setting out 
with such fancies, and then making the facts bend to 
humour them. This is indeed the great abuse of the 
doctrine of final causes ; and the more to be dreaded 
in its consequences, because of the religious feelings 
which are apt to mix themselves wdth such specula- 
tions, and to consecrate error.f 

4. The objections of Lord Bacon are the more 
clearly shown to be levelled against the abuse only, 
that we find him speaking in nearly similar terms of 
logic and the mathematics as having impeded the pro- 
gress of natural science. In the passage already re- 
ferred to, and which occurs twice in his books, where 
the Platonists are accused of mixing Natural Religion 
with Philosophy, the latter Platonists (or Eclectics) are 

* De Dig", lib. iii, c. 4. 

j- This idea is expressed by Bacon, with bis wonted felicity, in 
the 75th Aphorism. " Pessima enim res est errorum apotheosis; et 
pro peste intellectus habenda est, si vanis accedat veneratio." (Nov. 
Org", lib. i.) He gives an instance of this folly in the perverted use 
made of some portions of the Bible history — **Hinc vanitat nonnulli 
ex modernis summa levitate ita indulserunt, ut in primo capitulo 
Geneseos et in libro Job et aliis scripturis sacris, Philosophiam Na- 
turalem fundare conati sint? inter viva quasrentes mortua,^^ 



92 

in the same words charged with corrupting it by the 
mathematics, and the Peripatetics by logic.^ Not cer- 
tainly that the greatest logician of modern times could 
undervalue either his own art or the skill of the ana- 
lyst, but because Aristotle through dialectic, and Pro- 
clus through geometrical pedantry, neglected that hum- 
bler but more useful province of watching and inter- 
preting nature, and used the instruments furnished by 
logic, and the mathematics, not to assist them in classi- 
fying facts, in or reasoning from them, but to construct 
phantastic theories, to which they made the facts bend. 
When rightly examined, then, the authority of Lord 
Bacon appears not to oppose the doctrine which we 
are seeking to illustrate. Yet it is possible that a 
strong impression of the evils occasioned by the abuse 
of these speculations may have given him a less fa- 
vourable opinion of them than they deserved. It ap- 
pears that he had even conceived some prejudice 
against logic and the mathematics from a similar cause ; 
and he manifests it, not only in the passages already 
referred to, but in that portion of his treatise De Dig, 
et Aug., in which he treats of mathematical as an ap- 
pendix to physical science, expressing much hesitation 
whether to rank it as a science, and delivering him- 
self with some asperity against both logicians and ma- 
thematicians.t High as is the authority of this great 
man — and upon the subject of the present inquiry the 
highest of all — yet, if it clearly appears that the argu- 
ment from Final Causes comes within the scope of induc- 
tive science, we are bound to admit it within the circle 
of legitimate human knowledge, even if we found the 
father of that science had otherwise judged. It is clear 
that, had he now lived, he would himself have rejected 
some speculations as wholly beyond the reach of the 
human faculties, which he unhestatingly ranges among 

* Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 96; De Dig-, lib. i. 

■j- De Dig", lib. iii. c. 6. — Delicias et fastum mathematicorum, qui 
hanc scientiam physicae fieri imperare cupiunt. Nescio enim quo 
fato fiat ut mathematica et logica quae ancillarum loca erg-a physicam 
se g-erere debebant, nihilominus, certitudinem prae se jactantes, do- 
minationem exercere petunt." 



93 

the objects of sound philosophy,* It is equally unde- 
niable that he would have treated others with greater 
respect than he has shown them.t Above all, it is 
certain that he would never have suffered that the ve- 
neration due to his own name should enshrine an idolj 
to obstruct the progress of truth, and alienate her vo- 
taries from the true worship which he himself had 
founded. 

That Lord Bacon has not himself indulged in any 
speculations akin to those of Natural Theology is, be- 
yond all dispute, true. There is hardly any writer 
upon moral or natural science, in whose works fewer 
references can be found to the power or wisdom of a 
superintending Providence. It would be difficult to 
find in any other author, ancient or modern, as 
much of very miscellaneous matter upon almost all 
physical subjects as he has brought together in the 
Sylva Sylvarum, without one allusion to Final Causes. 
But it must also be admitted, that it would not be easy 
to find in any other writer of the least name upon phy- 
sical subjects so little of value, and so much that is 
wholly unworthy of respect. That work is, indeed, a 
striking instance of the inequalities of the human facul- 
ties. Among the one thousand observations of which 
it consists, hardly one — of the two hundred and eigh- 
teen pages certainly not one — can be found in which 
there is not some instance of credulity, superstition, 

* He distinctly considers the "doctrine of angels and spirits'* as 
an "appendix to Natural Theology," and holds that their nature 
may be investigated by science, including that of unclean spirits or 
demons, which he says hold in this inquiry the same place as poi- 
sons do in physics, or vices in ethics. — (De Dig. lib. iii. c. 2.) Na- 
tural magic, the doctrine of fascination, the discovery of futurity 
from dreams and ecstasies, especially in bad health from death-bed 
glimpses — in a word, divination — he holds to be branches of science 
deserving of cultivation; though he warns against sorcery, or the 
practice of witchcraft. — (lb. hb. iv. c. 3, and hb. ii. c. 2.) 

f He complains of treatises of Natural History being " swelled 
with figures of animals and plants, and olher superfluous matter, in- 
stead of being enriched with solid observations." — (De Dig. 1. ii. c. 3.) 

i Idolum theatri, 

9 



94 

groundless hypothesis, manifest error of some kind or 
other ; and nothing at any time given to the world ever 
exhibited a more entire disregard of all his own rules 
of philosophizing: for a superficial examination of factSy 
a hasty induction, and a proneness to fanciful theory, 
form the distinguishing characters of the whole book. 
Assuredly it is a proof that the doctrine of Final 
Causes is not the only parent of a " phantastic philoso- 
phy," though the other base undergrowth of " hereti- 
cal religion "* may not be found in the recesses of the 
Sylva. 

Descartes, whose original genius for the abstract 
sciences fixed an era in the history of pure mathema- 
tics, as remarkable as Bacon's genius did in that of 
logic, like him failed egregiously as a cultivator of na- 
tural philosophy; and he excluded Final Causes alto- 
gether from his system as a preposterous speculation 
— an irreverent attempt to penetrate mysteries hidden 
from human eyes by the imperfection of our nature. 
But it is to be observed, that all the successful culti- 
vators of physical science have, as if under the influ- 
ence of an irresistible impulsion, indulged in the sub- 
lime contemplations of Natural Religion^ Nor have 
they fallen into this track from feeling and sentiment ; 
they have pursued it as one of the paths which induc- 
tive philosophy opens to the student of nature. To 
say nothing of Mr. Boyle, one of the earliest cultiva- 
tors of experimental philosophy, whose works are 
throughout imbued with this spirit, and who has left a 
treatise expressly on the subject of Final Causes, let 
us listen to the words of Sir Isaac Newton himself* 
The 2;reatest work of man, the Principia, closes with a 

* This striking and epigrammatic antithesis occurs more than 
once in his writings. Thus, in the Nov. Org. hb. i. aph. 65 — " Ex 
divinoram et humanorum malesana admixtione, non sokim educitur 
philosophia phantastica, sed etiam Religio haeretica;" and again, in 
De Dig. and Aug. hb. iii. c. 2, speaking of the abuse of specula- 
tions touching natural rehgion, he remarks on the ^'incommoda et 
pericula quae ex eo (abusu) turn religioni, turn philosophise impen- 
dent, utpote qui religionem haereticam procudit et philosophiam 
phantasticam et superstitiosam." 



95 

swift transition from its most difficult investigation, the 
determination and correction of a comet's trajectory 
upon the parabolic hypothesis,* to that celebrated scho- 
lium, upon which Dr. Clarke's argument ti priori for the 
existence of a Deity is built But whatever may be 
deemed the soundness of that argument, or the intrin- 
sic value of the eloquent and sublime passages which 
lay its foundation, its illustrious author at the same 
time points our attention to the demonstration from in- 
duction, and in the most distinct and positive terms 
sanctions the doctrine, that this is a legitimate branch 
of natural knowledge. " Hunc (Deum) cognoscimus 
per proprietates ejus et attributa et per sapientissimas 
et optimas rerum structuras et causas finales, et admi- 
ramur ob prospectiones." — "Deus sine dominio, provi- 
dentia, et causis finalibus, nihil alind est quam fatum 
et natura." — " Et hasc de Deo de quo utique ex phae- 
nomenis disserere ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet." 
(Scholium Generate. J 

And if he could not rest from his immortal labours 
in setting forth the system of the Universe, without 
raising his mind to the contemplation of Him who 
" weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a 
balance," so neither could he pursue the more minute 
operations of the most subtile material agent, without 
again rising towards Him who said " Let there be light." 
The most exquisite investigation ever conducted by 
man of the laws of nature by the means of experiment 
abounds in its latter portion, with explicit references 
to the doctrines of Natural Theology, and with admis- 
sions that the business of physical science is "to de- 
duce causes from effects till we come to the very First 
Cause," and "that every true step made in inductive 
philosophy is to be highly valued, becatxse it brings us 
nearer to the First Cause."t 

• Principia, lib. iii. Prop. xli. and xlii. 

f Optics, Book iii. Query 28. — " How came the bodies of ani- 
mals to be contrived with so much art, find for what ends were the 
several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in optics, and 
the ear without knowledge of sound?" (See, too, Query 31,) 



96 



SECTION VII. 



OF SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT, A\D THE METHODS OF 
ANALYSIS ANI> SYNTHESIS. 

Having shown that Natural Theology is a branch 
of inductive science — partly physical, partly intellec- 
tual and moral — it is of comparatively little impor- 
tance to inquire whether or not it can be kept apart 
from the other branches of those sciences. In one 
view of this question we may seiy, that there is no more 
ground for the separation than there would be for 
making a distinct science of all the propositions in Na- 
tural Philosophy which immediately relate to the hu- 
man body — w^hereby we should have portions of dy- 
namics, pneumatics, optics, chemistry, electricity, and 
all human anatomy and pathology as contradistinguish- 
ed from comparative, reduced under one and the same . 
head — a classification, indeed, resembling Lord Bacon's. 
But in another, and, as it seems, the more just view, 
there is a sufficient number of resemblances and dif- 
ferences, and the importance of the subject is sufficient, 
to justify the making a separate head of Natural The- 
ology. The question is entirely one of convenience ; 
nothing of essential moment turns upon the classifica- 
tion ; and there is obviously an advantage in having 
the truths collected in one body, though they are culled 
from the various parts of Physical and Metaphysical 
science to which they naturally belong. All that is 
needful is, constantly to keep in mind the identity of 
the evidence on which these truths rest, with that 
which is the groundwork of those other parts of philo- 
sophy. 

Although, however, convenience and the para- 
mount importance of the subject seem to require such 



97 

a separation, it Is manifest that much of theology 
must still be found intermingled with physics and 
psychology, and there only; for the truths of Natural 
Theology being sufficiently demonstrated by a cer- 
tain induction of facts — a certain number of experi- 
ments and observations — no farther proof is required; 
and to assemble all the evidence, if it were possible, 
would be only encumbering the subject with super- 
fluous proofs, while the collection would still remain 
incomplete, as every day is adding to the instances 
discovered of design appearing in the phenomena 
of the natural and moral world. It has been said, 
indeed, that a single well-established proof of design 
is enough, and that no additional strength is gained 
to the argument by multiplying the instances. We 
shall afterwards show w^th what limitations this pro- 
position is to be received; but for our present pur- 
pose it is sufficient, that, at all events, a certain defi- 
nite number of instances are of force enough to work 
out the demonstration; and yet in every branch of 
physics and psychology new instances are presented 
at each step we make. These instances are of great 
importance; they are to be carefully noted and trea- 
sured up; they form most valuable parts of those 
scientific inquiries, conveying, in its purest form and 
in its highest degree, the gratification of contem- 
plating abstract truths, in which consists the whole 
of the pleasure derived fi*om science, properly so 
called — that is, from science as such, and as indepen- 
dent of its application to uses or enjoyments of a cor- 
poreal kind. 

An apprehension has frequently been entertained 
by learned and pious men — men of a truly philoso- 
phical spirit — lest the natural desire of tracing design 
in the works of nature should carry inquirers too far, 
and lead them to give scope to their imagination 
rather than contain their speculations within the 
bounds of strict reasoning. They have dreaded the 
introduction of what Lord Bacon calls a " phantastic 

9# 



98 

philosophy/' and have also felt alarm at the injuries 
which religion may receive from being exposed to 
ridicule, in the event of the speculations proving 
groundless upon a closer examination. But it does 
not appear reasonable that philosophers should be de- 
terred by such considerations from anxiously investi- 
gating the subject of Final Causes, and giving it the 
place which belongs to it in all their inquiries; pro- 
vided they do not suffer fancy to intermix with and 
disturb their speculations. If they do, they commit 
the greatest error of which reasoners can be guilty — 
an error against which it is the very object of induc- 
tive philosophy to guard; but it is no more an error 
in this, than in the other investigations of science. 
He who imagines design where there is none; he 
who either assumes facts in order to build upon them 
an inference favourable to Natural Religion, or from 
admitted facts draws such an inference fancifully, and 
not logically, comes within the description of a false 
philosopher: he prefers the hypothetical to the induc- 
tive method; he cannot say with his master, ^'hypo- 
theses non Jingof^'^ he renounces the modern, and 
recurs to the exploded modes of philosophizing. But 
he is not the more a false philosopher, and does not 
the more sin against the light of improved science, 
for committing the offence in the pursuit of theologi- 
cal truth. He would have been liable to the same 
charge if he had resorted to his fancy instead of ob- 
servation and experiment w^hile in search of any 
other scientific truth, or had hypothetically assumed 
a principle of classifying admitted phenomena, in- 
stead of rigorously deducing it from examining their 
circumstances of resemblance and of diversity. 

That any serious discredit can be brought upon 
the science of Natural Theology itself, from the fail- 
ures to which such hypothetical reasonings may lead, 
seems not very easy to conceive. Vain and superfi- 
cial minds may take any subject for their ridicule, 

* Principi?^ lib, iii. Sch, Gen, 



99 

and may laugh at the mechanician and the chemist as 
well as the theologian, when they chance to go astray 
in their searches after truth. Yet no one ever thought 
of being discouraged from experimental inquiries, be- 
cause even the strictest prosecution of the inductive 
method cannot always guard against error. It is of 
the essence of all investigations of merely contingent 
truth, tliat they are exposed to casualties which do 
not beset the paths of the geometrician and the analyst. 
A conclusion from one induction of facts" may be well 
warranted until a larger induction obliges us to aban- 
don it, and adopt another. Yet no one deems che- 
mistry discredited because a body considered in one 
state of our knowledge to be a compound acid has 
since appeared rather to be a simple substance, bear- 
ing to the acids no resemblance in it? composition; 
nor would the optical discoveries of Sir Isoac New- 
ton be discredited, much less the science he cultivated 
be degraded, if the undulatory hypothesis should, on 
a fuller inquiry, become established by strict proof. 
Yet such errors, or rather such imperfect and partial 
views, were the result of a strict obedience to the in- 
ductive rules of philosophizing. How much less 
ground for cavil against either of those rules, or the 
sciences to which they are applicable, would be af- 
forded by the observations of those who had mistaken 
their way through a neglect of inductive principle, 
and by following blindly false guides! 

While, then, on the one hand, we allow Natural 
Theology to form a distinct head or branch, the other 
sciences must of necessity continue to class its truths 
among their own; and thus every science may be stated 
to consist of three divisions — 1. The truths which it 
teaches relative to the constitution and action of matter 
or of mind; — 2. The truths which it teaches relative 
to theology ; and 3. The application of both classes of 
truths to practical uses, physical or moral. Thus, the 
science of pneumatics teaches, under t\i(i first head, the 
doctrine of the pressure of the atmosphere, and its con- 



100 

nexion with respiration, and with the suspension of 
weights by the formation of a vacuum. Under the se- 
cond head, it shows the adaptation of the lungs of cer- 
tain animals to breathe the air, and the feet of others 
to support their bodies, in consequence of both being 
framed in accordance with the former doctrine — that 
is, with the law of pressure — and thus demonstrates a 
wise and beneficent design. Under the third head, it 
teaches the construction of barometers, steam-engines, 
&c., while the contemplation of the Divine wisdom 
and goodness inculcates piety, patience, and hope. 

But it may be said, that in this classification of the 
objects of science, we omit one ordinarily reckoned es- 
sential — the explanation of phenomena. The answer 
is, that such a classification is not strictly accurate, as 
no definite line can be drawn between the explanation 
of phenomena and the analytical process by which the 
truths themselves are established: in a word, between 
analysis and synthesis in the sciences of contingent truth. 
For the same phenomena which form the materials of 
the analytical investigation — the steps that lead us to 
the proposition or discovery — would, in a reversed or- 
der, become the suhjects of the synthetical operation; 
that is, the things to be explained by means of the 
proposition or discovery, if we had been led to it by 
another route ; in other words, if we had reached it by 
means of other phenomena of the like kind, referrible 
to the same class, and falling within the same princi- 
ple or rule. Thus, the experiments upon the prisma- 
tic spectrum prove the sun's light to be composed of 
rays of different refrangibility. This being demon- 
strated, we may explain by means of it the phenome- 
na which form the proofs of the first proposition of the 
^' Optics,''^ that lights which diflfer in colour differ in re- 
frangibility — as that a parallelogram of two colours 
refracted through a prism has its sides no longer pa- 
rallel; or, having shown the different refrangibility by 
the prismatic phenomena, we may explain why a lens 
has the focus of violet rays nearer than the focus of 
red, while this experiment is of itself one of the most 



101 

cogent proofs of the different refrangibility. It is plain 
that in these cases, the same phenomenon may be 
made indiscriminately the subject of matter either of 
analysis or synthesis. So, one of the proofs given of latent 
heat is that after you heat a bar of iron once or twice 
by hammering it, the power of being thus heated is 
exhausted, until by exposing it to the tire that power 
is restored. Yet, suppose we had proved the doctrine 
of the absorption of heat by other experiments — as by 
the effects on the thermometer of liquids of different tem- 
peratures mixed together — the phenomenon of the iron 
T3ar would be explicable by that doctrine thus learnt. 
Again, another proof of the same truth is the produc- 
tion of heat by the sudden condensation of gaseous fluids, 
and of cold by evaporation, the evolution of heat being 
inferred from the former, and its absorption from the 
latter operation. But if the experiments upon the 
mixture of fluids of different temperatures, and other 
facts, had sufficiently proved the disappearance of heat 
in its sensible form, and its being held in a state in 
w^hich it did not atfect the thermometer, we should 
by means of that doctrine have been able to account 
for the refrigerating effect of evaporation, and the 
heating power of condensation. 

It cannot, then, be a real and an accurate distinc- 
tion, or one founded on the nature of the thing, which 
depends on the accident of the one set of facts having 
been chosen for the instruments of the analytical, and 
the other set for the subjects of the synthetical ope- 
ration, each set being alike applicable to either use. 
For, in order that the synthesis may be correct, nay, 
in order that it may be strict and not hypothetical, it 
is obviously necessary that the phenomena should be 
of such a description as might have made them sub- 
servient to the analysis. In truth, both the operations 
are essentially the sam.e — the generalization of parti- 
culars — the arranging or classifying facts so as to ob- 
tain a more general or comprehensive fact; and the 
explanation of phenomena, is just as much a process 
of generalization or classification as the investigatioa 



102 

of the proposition itself, by means of which you are 
to give the explanation. We do not perform two 
operations, but one, in these investigations. We do 
not in reality first find by the prism that light is dif- 
ferently refrangible, and then explain the rainbow — 
or show by the air-pump that the atmosphere presses 
with the weight of so many pounds upon a square 
foot, and then explain the steam-engine and the fly^s 
foot — or prove, by burning the two weighed gases to- 
gether and burning iron in one of them, that water is 
composed of them both, and that rust is the metal 
combined with one, and then explain why iron rusts 
in water. But we observe all these several facts, and 
find that they are related to each other, and resolva- 
ble into three classes — that the phenomena of the 
prism and of the shower are the same, the spectrum 
and the rainbow being varieties of the same fact, more 
general than either, and comprehending many others, 
all reducible within its compass — that the air-pump, 
the steam-engine, the fly^s foot, are all the same fact, 
and come within a description still more general and 
compendious — that the rusting of iron, the burning 
of inflammable air, and the partial consumption of the 
blood in the lungs, are likewise the same fact in dif- 
ferent shapes, and resolvable into a fact much more 
comprehensive. 

If, then, the distinction of investigation and expla- 
nation, or the analytical and synthetical process, is to 
be retained, it can only be nominal; and it is produc- 
tive of but little if any convenience. On the contra- 
ry, it is calculated to introduce inaccurate habits of 
philosophizing, and holds out a temptation to hypo- 
thetical reasoning. Having obtained a general law, or 
theory, we are prone to apply it where no induction 
shows that it is applicable; and perceiving that it 
would account for the observed phenomena, if certain 
things existed, we are apt to assume their existence, 
that we may apply our explanation. Thus, we know 
that if the walrus's foot, or the fly^s make a vacuum. 



103 

the pressure of the air will support the anunaPg 
weight, and hence we assume that the vacuum is 
made. Yet it is clear that we have no right whatever 
to do so; and that the strict rules of induction require 
us to prove the vacuum before we can arrange this 
fact in the same class with the other instances of at- 
mospheric pressure. But when we have proved it by 
observation, it will be said we have gained nothing 
by our general doctrine. True; but all that the science 
entitles us to do is, not to draw facts we are half ac- 
quainted with under the arbitrary sway of our rule, 
but to examine each fact in all its parts, and bring it 
legitimately within the rule by means of its ascer- 
tained resemblances — that is, classify it with those 
others to which it bears the common relation. Induc- 
tion gives us the right to expect that the same result 
will always happen from the same, action operating 
in like circumstances; but it is of the essence of this 
inference that the similarity be first shown. 

It may be worth while to illustrate this further, as 
it is an error very generally prevailing, and leads to 
an exceedingly careless kind of inquiry. The fun- 
damental rule of inductive science is, that no hypo- 
thesis shall be admitted — that nothing shall be assumed 
merely because, if true, it would explain the facts. 
Thus, the magnetic theory of ^plnus is admitted by 
all to be admirably consistent with itself, and to ex- 
plain all the phenomena — that is, to tally exactly with 
the facts observed. But there is no proof at all of 
the accumulation of electrical or magnetic fluid at the 
one pole, and other fundamental positions; on the 
contrary, the facts are rather against them: therefore, 
the theory is purely gratuitous; and although it would 
be difficult to find any other, on any subject, more 
beautiful in itself, or more consistent with all the phe- 
nomena, it is universally rejected as a mere hypothe- 
sis, of no use or value in scientific research. The in- 
ductive method consists in only admitting those things 
which the facts prove to be true, and excludes the 



104 

supposing things merely because they square with 
the facts. Whoever makes such suppositions upon 
observing a certain number of facts, and then varies 
those suppositions when new facts come to his know- 
ledge, so as to make the theory tally with the observa- 
tion — whoever thus goes on touching and retouching 
his theory each time a new fact is observed which 
does not fall within the original proposition, is a mere 
framer of hypotheses, not an inductive inquirer — a 
fancier, and not a philosopher. 

Now, this being the undoubted rule, does not the 
course of those fall exactly within it, who, having upon 
a certain class of phenomena, built a conclusion legi- 
timately and by strict induction, employ that conclu- 
sion to explain other phenomena, which they have 
not previously shown to fall within the same descrip- 
tion? Take the example of the Torricellian vacuum. 
Having by thatexperimentproved the weightof the at- 
mosphere, we have a right to conclude that a tube filled 
with water forty feet high would have a vacuum in the 
uppermost seven feet — because we know the relative 
specific gravities of water and mercury, and might 
predict from thence that the lighter fluid would stand 
at the height of thirty-three feet; and this conclusion 
we have a right to draw, without any experiments to 
ascertain the existence of a vacuum in the upper part 
of the tube. But we should have no right what- 
ever to draw this conclusion, without ascertaining the 
specific gravities of the two fluids: for if we did, it 
would be assuming that the two facts belonged to the 
same class. So respecting the power of the walrus 
or the fly to walk up a vertical plane. We know the 
effects of exhausting the air between any two bodies, 
and leaving the external atmosphere to press against 
them: they will cohere. But if from thence we 
explain the support given to the walrus or the fly 
without examining their feet, and ascertaining that 
they do exhaust or press out the air — if, in short, we 
assume the existence of a vacuum under their feet, 



105 

merely because were there a vacuum the pressure of 
the air would produce the cohesion, and thus account 
for the phenomena — we really only propound an hy- 
pothesis. We suppose certain circumstances to ex- 
ist, in order to classify the fact with other facts actual- 
ly observed, and the existence of which circumstances 
is necessary, in order that the phenomena may be re- 
ducible under the same head. 

There is no reason whatever for asserting that this 
view of the subject restricts the use of induction by 
requiring too close and constant a reference to actual 
observation. The inductive principle is this — that 
from observing a number of particular facts, we rea- 
son to others of the same kind — that from observing 
a certain thing to happen in certain circumstances, we 
expect the same thing to happen in the like circum- 
stances. This is to generalize; but then this assumes 
that we first show the identity of the facts, by proving 
the similarity of the circumstances. If not, we sup- 
pose or fancy, and do not reason or generalize. The 
tendency of the doctrine that a proposition being de- 
monstrated by one set of facts, may be used to explain 
another set, has the effect of making us suppose or 
assume the identity or resemblance which ought to be 
proved. The true principle is, that induction is the 
generalizing or classifying of . facts by observed re- 
semblances, and diversities. 

Nothing here stated has any tendency to shackle 
our experimental inquiries by too rigidly narrowing 
the proof. Thus, although we are not allowed to 
suppose any thing merely because, if it existed, 
other things would be explained; yet, when no other 
supposition will account for the appearances, the hy- 
pothesis is no longer gratuitous; and it constantly 
happens, that an inference drawn from an imperfect 
induction, and which would be, on that state of the 
facts, unauthorized because equivocal and not the only 
supposition on which the facts could be explained, 
becomes legitimate on a further induction^ whereby 

10 



106 

we show that, though the facts first observed might 
be explained by some other supposition, yet those 
facts newly observed could to no other supposition 
be reconciled. Thus, the analytical experiment on 
the constitution of water, by passing steam over red 
hot iron, is not conclusive, because, although it tallies 
well with the position that water consists of oxygen 
and hydrogen, yet it would also tally with another 
supposition that those gases were produced in the pro- 
cess, and not merely separated from each other; so 
that neither oxygen nor hydrogen existed in the wa- 
ter any more than acid and water exist in coal and 
wood, but only their elements, and that, like the 
acid and water, the products of the destructive dis- 
tillation of those vegetable substances, the oxygen 
and hydrogen, were compounded, and in fact pro- 
duced by the process. But when, besides the analy- 
tical, we have the synthetical experiments of Mr. 
Cavendish and Dr. Priestley* — when we find that by 
burning the two gases in a close vessel, they disap- 
pear, and leave a weight of water equal to their united 
weights — we have a fact not reconcileable to any other 
supposition, except that of the composition of this 
fluid. It is as when, in solving a problem, we fix 
upon a point in one line, curved or straight, because 
it answers one of the conditions — it may be the right 
point, or it may not, for all the other points of the line 
equally answer that condition; but when we also show 
that the remaining conditions require the point to be 
in another line, and that this other intersects the for- 

* Dr. Priestley drew no conclusion of the least value from his 
experiments. But Mr. Watt, after thoroug-hly weighing them, by 
careful comparison with other facts, arrived at the opinion that 
they proved the composition of water. This may justly be said to 
have been the discovery of that great truth in chemical science. I 
have examined the evidence, and am convinced that he was the 
first discoverer, in point of time, although it is very possible that 
Mr. Cavendish may have arrived at the same truth from his own 
experiments, without any knowledge of Mr. Watt's earlier process 
of reasoning. 



107 

mer in the very point we had assumed, then no doubt 
can exist, and the point is evidently the one required, 
none other fulfilling all the conditions. 

We have used the words analytical and syntheti- 
cal as applicable to the experiments of resolution and 
composition; and in this sense these terms are strictly 
correct in reference to inductive operations. But the 
use of the terms analysis and synthesis as applicable 
to the processes of induction — the former being the 
investigation of truths by experiment or observation, 
and the latter the explaining other facts by means of 
the truths so ascertained — is by no means so correct, 
and rests upon an extremely fallacious analogy, if 
there be, indeed, any analogy, for identity, or even 
resemblance, there is none. The terms are borrowed 
from mathematical science, where they denote the 
two kinds of investigation employed in solving prob- 
lems and investigating theorems. When, in order 
to solve a problem, we suppose a thing done which 
we know not how to do, we reason upon the assump- 
tion that the prescribed conditions have been com- 
plied with, and proceed till we find something which 
we already possess the means of doing. This gives 
us the construction; and the synthetical demonstra- 
tion consists in merely retracing the steps of the ana- 
lysis. And so of a theorem: we assume it to be true, 
and reasoning on that assumption, we are led to some- 
thing which we know from other sources to be true, 
the synthesis being the same operation reversed. 
The two operations consist here, of manifest necessi- 
ty, of tiie very same steps — the one being the steps 
of the other taken in the reverse order. In Physics, 
to make the operations similar to these, the same 
facts should be the ground or component parts of 
both. In analysis, we should ascend not only from 
particulars to generals, but from the same particulars, 
and then the synthesis would be a descent through 
the same steps to the particular phenomena from the 
general fact. But it is a spurious synthesis, unlike 
the mathematical, and not warranted by induction, to 



108 

prove the proposition by one set of facts, and by that 
proposition to explain — that is, classify — another set, 
without examining it by itself. If we do examine it 
by itself, and find that it is such as the proposition 
applies to, then also is it such as might prove the pro- 
position; and the synthesis is here, as in the case of 
the mathematical investigation, the analysis reversed. 
As far as any resemblance or analogy goes, there is 
even a greater affinity between the inductive analysis 
and the geometrical synthesis, than between those 
operations which go by the same name; and I hardly 
know any thing in experimental investigation resem- 
bling the mathematical analysis, unless it be when, 
from observing certain facts, we assume a position, 
and then infer, that if this be true, some other facts 
must also exist, which we find (from other proofs) 
really do exist. This bears a resemblance rather to 
the analytical investigation than to the composition 
or synthetical demonstration of theorems in the an- 
cient geometry. It is not the course of reasoning 
frequently pursued in experimental sciences; but a 
most beautiful example of it occurs in the Second 
Part of Dr. Black^s experiments on Magnesia Alba 
and Quick Lime, the foundation of the modern ga- 
seous chemistry. 

Upon the whole, the use of these terms is apt to 
mislead; and, for the reasons which have been as- 
signed, there seems no solidity in the division of in- 
ductive inquiry into the two classes.* 

* When this section was written, I had not seen Mr. Stewart's 
learned remarks upon analysis and synthesis in the second volume 
of his Elements, nor was aware of the observations of Dr. Hook, 
quoted by him, and which show a remarkable coincidence with one 
of the observations in the text. Mr. Stewart's speculations do not 
come upon the same ground with mine; but Dr. Hook having* re- 
versed the use of the terms analysis and synthesis in experimental 
science, affords a strong confirmation of the reiiiark wliich I have 
ventured to make upon the inaccuracy of this application of mathe- 
matical language. — (See Elem, of Phil, of Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 
§54, 4to.) 



PART THE SECOND. 



OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF NATURAL 
THEOLOGY. 



The uses of studying the science to which our in- 
quiries have been directed, now demand some con- 
sideration. These consist of the pleasures which at- 
tend all scientific pursuits, the pleasures and the im- 
provement peculiar to the study of Natural Theology, 
and the service rendered by this study to the doc- 
trines of Revelation. 



SECTION I. 

OF THE PLEASURES OF SCIENCE. 

As we have established the position that Natural 
Theology is a branch of Inductive Science, it follows 
that its truths are calculated to bestow the same kind 
of gratification which the investigation and the con- 
templation of scientific truth generally is fitted to 
give. 

That there is a positive pleasure in such researches 
and such views, wholly independent of any regard to 
the advantages derived from their application to the 
aid of man in his physical necessities, is quite undeni 
able. The ascertaining by demonstration any of the 
gres^t truths in the mathematics, or proving by experi- 

10* 



110 

ment any of the important properties of matter, would 
give a real and solid pleasure, even were it certain that 
no practical use could be made of either the one or the 
other. To know that the square of the hypothenuse 
is always exactly equal to the sum of the squares of 
the sides of a right-angled triangle, whatever be its 
size, and whatever the magnitude of the acute angles, 
is pleasing ; and to be able to trace the steps by which 
the absolute certainty of this proposition is established 
is gratifying, even if we were wholly ignorant that the 
art of guiding a ship through the pathless ocean main- 
ly depends upon it. Accordingly we derive pleasure 
from rising to the contemplation of the much more 
general truth, of which the discovery of Phythagoras 
(the forty-seventh proposition of the First Book of 
Euclid) is but a particular case, and which is also ap- 
plicable to all similar triangles, and indeed to circles 
and eUipses also, described on the right-angled tri- 
angle's sides; and yet that general proposition is of 
no use in navigation, nor indeed in any other practi- 
cal art. In like manner the pleasure derived from 
ascertaining that the pressure of the air and the crea- 
tion of a vacuum alike cause the rise of the mer- 
cury in the barometer, and give the power to flies 
of walking on the ceiling of a room, is wholly inde- 
pendent of any practical use obtained from the dis- 
covery, inasmuch as it is a pleasure superadded to 
that of contemplating the doctrine proved by the Tor- 
ricellian experiment, which had conferred all its prac- 
tical benefits long before the cause of the fly's power 
was found out. Thus, again, it is one of the most 
sublime truths in science, and the contemplation of 
which, as mere contemplation, affords the greatest plea- 
sure, that the same power which makes a stone fall to 
the ground keeps the planets in their course, moulds 
the huge masses of those heavenly bodies into their ap- 
pointed forms, and reduces to perfect order all the ap- 
parent irregularities of the system : so that the handful 
of sand which for an instant ruffles the surface of the 



Ill 

lake, acts by the same law which governs, through 
myriads of ages, the mighty system composed of myriads 
of worlds. There is a positive pleasure in generalizing 
facts and arguments — in perceiving the wonderful pro- 
duction of most unlike results from a few very simple 
principles — in finding the same powers or agents re- 
appearing in difTerent situations, and producing the 
most diverse and unexpected effects — in tracing unex- 
pected resemblances and differences — in ascertaining 
that truths or facts apparently unlike are of the same 
nature, and observing wherein those apparently similar 
are various : and this pleasure is quite independent of 
all considerations relating to practical application ; nay, 
the additional knowledge that those truths are susceptible 
of a beneficial application gives a further gratification 
of the like kind to those who are certain never to have 
the opportunity of sharing the benefits obtained, and 
who indeed may earnestly desire never to be in the 
condition of being able to share them. Thus, in addi- 
tion to the pleasure received from contemplating a 
truth in animal physiology, we have another gratifica- 
tion from finding that one of its corollaries is the con- 
struction of an instrument useful in some painful sur- 
gical operation. Yet, assuredly, we have no desire 
ever to receive advantage from this corollary; and our 
scientific gratification was wholly without regard to any 
such view. In truth, generalizing — the discovery of re- 
mote analogies — of resemblances among unlike objects 
— forms one of the most pleasing employments of our fa- 
culties in every department of mental exertion, from the 
most severe investigation of the mathematician to the 
lightest efforts of the wit. To trace the same equahty, or 
other relation between figures apparently unlike, is the 
chief glory of the geometrician; to bring together ideas 
of the most opposite description, and show them in unex- 
pected, yet when suddenly pointed out, undeniable con- 
nexion, is the very definition of wit. Nay, the propo- 
sition which we have just enunciated is a striking in- 
stance of the same general truth; for we have been 



112 

surveying the resemblance, or rather the identity, in 
one important particular of two pursuits, in all other 
respects the most widely remote from each other — ma- 
thematics and wit. 

If the mere contemplation of scientific truth is the 
source of real gratification, there is another pleasure, 
alike remote from all reference to practical use or 
benefit, and which is obtained by tracing the investi- 
gations and demonstration — the steps that lead analyti- 
cally to the discovery, and synthetically to the proof of 
those truths. This is a source of pleasure, both by 
giving us the assurance that the propositions of gene- 
ralization — the statements of resemblance and diversity 
are true in themselves, and also by the consciousness of 
power which it imparts, and the feeling of difficulty 
overcome which it involves. We feel gratified when 
we have closely followed the brilliant induction which 
led Newton to the discovery that white is the union of 
all colours; and when we have accompanied him in 
the series of profound researches, from the invention 
of a new calculus or instrument of investigation, through 
innumerable original geometrical lemmas, to the final 
demonstration that the force of gravitation deflects the 
comet from the tangent of its elliptical orbit ; and we 
feel the gratification because the pursuit of these in- 
vestigations assures us that the marvellous propositions 
are indeed true — because there is a consciousness of 
man's power in being able to penetrate so far into the 
secrets of nature, and search so far into the structure 
of the universe — and because there is a pleasure, which 
we enjoy individually, in having accomplished a task 
of considerable difficulty. In these gratifications, de- 
rived from the contemplation and the investigation of 
general laws, consists the Pleasure of Science properly 
so called, and apart from all views of deriving particu- 
lar advantages from its application to man's use. 

This pleasure is increased as often as we find that 
any scientific discovery is susceptible of practical ap- 
plications. The contemplation of this adaptation is 



113 

pleasing, independent of any regard to our own indi- 
vidual advantage, and even though we may desire 
never to be in a condition to reap benefit from it. We 
sympathize, perhaps, with those who may be so unfor- 
tunate as to require the aid afforded by such applica- 
tions to relieve and assuage pain ; but the mere know- 
ledge that such a corollary follows from the discovery 
of the scientific truth is pleasing. Of course the grati- 
fication is increased, if we know that individually we 
shall profit by it, and we may perhaps always more 
or less contemplate this possibility ; but this is a plea- 
sure, properly speaking, of a different kind from that 
which science, as such, bestows. 

The branch of science which we are here particu- 
larly considering differs in no respect from the other 
departments of philosophy in the kind of gratification 
which it aflTords to those who cultivate it. Natural 
Theology, like the other sciences, whether physical or 
mental, bestows upon the student the pleasures of con- 
templation — of generalization; and it bestows this 
pleasure in an eminent degree. To trace design in 
the productions and in the operations of nature, or 
in those of the human understanding, is, in the strict- 
est sense of the word, generalization, and consequent- 
ly produces the same pleasure with the generaliza- 
tions of. physical and of psychological science. Every 
part of the foregoing reasoning, therefore, applies 
closely and rigorously to the study of Natural The- 
ology. Thus, if it is pleasing to find that the pro- 
perties of two curves so exceedingly unlike as the 
elHpse and the hyperbola closely resemble each other, 
or that appearances so dissimilar as the motion of the 
moon and the fall of an apple from the tree are differ- 
ent forms of the same fact, it affords a pleasure of the 
same kind to discover that the light of the glow-worm 
and the song of the nightingale are both provisions of 
nature for the same end of attracting the animal's 
mate, and continuing its kind — that the peculiar law 
of attraction pervading all matter, the magnitude of 



114 

the heavenly bodies, the planes they move in, and the 
directions of their courses, are all so contrived as to 
make their mutual actions, and the countless dis- 
turbances thence arising all secure a perpetual stability 
to the system which no other arrangement could attain. 
It is a highly pleasing contemplation of the self-same 
kind with those of the other sciences to perceive every 
where design and adaptation — to discover uses even in 
things apparently the most accidental — to trace this 
so constantly, that where peradventure we cannot find 
the purpose of nature, we never for a moment suppose 
there was none, but only that we have hitherto failed 
in finding it out — and to arrive at the intimate persua- 
sion that all seeming disorder is harmony — all chance, 
design — and that nothing is made in vain; nay, things 
which in our ignorance we had overlooked as unimport- 
ant, or even complained of as evils, fill us afterwards 
with contentment and delight, when we find that they 
are subservient to the most important and beneficial 
uses. Thus, inflammation and the generation of matter 
in a wound we find to be the effort which Nature 
makes to produce new flesh, and effect the cure; the 
opposite hinges of the vales in the veins and arteries 
are the means of enabling the blood to circulate ; and 
so of innumerable other arrangements of the animal 
economy. So, too, there is the highest gratification 
derived from observing that there is a perfect unity, 
or, as it has been called, a personality, in the kind of the 
contrivances in which the universe abounds ; and truly 
this peculiarity of character, or of manner, as other 
writers have termed it, affords the same species of 
pleasure which we derive from contemplating general 
resemblances in the other sciences. 

We may close this branch of the subject with the 
observation that those other sciences have often in 
their turn derived aid from Natural Theology, at least 
from the speculation of Final Causes, for which they, 
generally speaking, lay the foundation. Many dis- 
coveries in the physiology both of animals and plants 



119 

owe their origin to some arrangement or structure 
being remarked, the peculiar object of which was not 
known, and the ascertaining of which led to the know- 
ledge of an important truth. The well-known anec- 
dote of Harvey, related by Mr. Boyle, is the best ex- 
ample of this which can be given. In his tract on 
Final Causes he thus w^rites: — "I remember that 
when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only dis- 
course I had with him, (which was but a while before 
he died,) what were the things that induced him to 
think of a circulation of the blood, he answered me, 
that when he took notice that the valves in the veins 
of so many parts of the body were so placed that they 
gave free passage to the blood towards the heart, but 
opposed the passage of the veinal blood the contrary 
way, he was incited to imagine that so provident a 
cause as Nature had not so placed so many valves 
without design, and no design seemed more probable 
than that since the blood could not well, because of 
the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the 
limbs, it should be sent through the arteries, and re- 
turn through the veins whose valves did not oppose 
its course that way.'^* Even the arts have borrowed 
from the observation of the animal economy. Those 
valves — the hollow bones of birds — the sockets of 
the joints — have all furnished suggestions upon which 
some of our most useful machinery is construct- 
ed. Nor can any abuse arise from this employ- 
ment of the argument, so long as we take care only 
to let it occupy the subordinate place of a suggestor 
— an originator of inquiry — and never suffer it to 
usurp the station of a sole guide, or a substitute for 
that induction which alone can be relied on in form- 
ing our conclusions. The ancients were ignorant of 
this caution, and would probably have rested satis- 
fied with the consideration which only set Harvey 

♦ Disquisition about the Filial Causes of Natural Things. — Works, 
Y. 427. 4to. 



116 

upon making experiments, instead of proving in this 
way what the argument from Final Causes only ren- 
dered probable. Hence, much of what, as we have 
already explained, Lord Bacon has said upon the sub- 
ject of this speculation, abused as it certainly has been 
in all ages, but especially in ancient times. 



SECTION II. 

OF THE PLEASURE AND IMPROVEMENT PECULIAR TO 
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 

Hitherto we have only shown that the gratifica- 
tion which the contemplation of scientific truth is 
calculated to bestow belongs to Natural Theology, in 
common with the other branches of Philosophy. 
But there are several considerations which make it 
plain that the pleasure must be greater which flows 
from the speculations of this than any which the other 
sciences confer. 

In the first place, the nature of the truths with 
which Natural Theology is conversant is to be con- 
sidered. They relate to the evidences of design, of 
contrivance, of power, of wisdom, of goodness — but 
let us only say, of design or contrivance. Nothing 
can be more gratifying to the mind than such contem- 
plations: they afford great scope to the reasoning 
powers; the}' exercise the resources of our ingenuity; 
they give a new aspect to the most ordinary appear- 
ances; they impart life as it were to dead matter; they 
are continually surprising us with novel and unexpect- 
ed proofs of intentions plainly directed to a manifest 
object. If some scoffers and superficial persons de- 
spise the enthusiasm with which these investigations 
have at times been pursued, and hold the exercise 
given by them to the ingenuity of inquirers to be 



117 

rather a play of imagination than of reasoning, it is 
equally undeniable that in some of the most important 
and most practically useful of the sciences, design, so 
far from being a matter of fanciful conjecture, is al- 
ways assumed as incontestable, and the inquiry, often 
with a merely practical view, is confined to discover- 
ing what the object of the design is. Thus, when 
the physiologist has discovered some part of the ani- 
mal body before unknown, or observed some new 
operation of the known organs, he never doubts that 
design exists, and that some end is to be answered. 
This he takes for granted without any reasoning; and 
he only endeavours to find out what the purpose is — 
what use the part can have — what end the operation 
is intended to accomplish; never supposing it possi- 
ble that either the part could be created, or the func- 
tion appointed, without an object. The investigation 
€onducted upon the assumption of this postulate has 
frequently led to the most brilliant discoveries — 
among others, as we have just seen, to by far the most 
important ever made in physiological science. For 
the mere exercise of the intellectual faculties, or gra- 
tification of scientific curiosity, we may refer to al- 
most all the singular phenomena which form the 
bases of the reasonings as to design — the structure of 
the ear, and still more of the eye — the circulation of 
the blood — the physiology of the foetus in the uterus, 
as contrasted with the economy of the born animal, 
and the prospective contrivances of a system which 
until the birth is to be wholly useless — the structure 
of the eye and the nictitating membrane in different 
birds, and the haw in certain quadrupeds — the powers 
of the eye in birds of prey — perhaps more than any 
thing else, the construction of their cells by bees, ac- 
cording to the most certain principles discovered by 
men only with the help of the most refined analyti- 
cal calculus. The atheist can only deny the wonder- 
ful nature of such operations of instinct by the vio- 
lent assumption that the bee works as the heavenly 

11 



118 

"bodies roli;> and that its mathematically correct ope- 
rations are no more to be wondered at than the equal- 
ly mathematically adjusted movements of the planets 
— a truly violent assumption, and especially of those 
who angrily deny that men have a soul differing in 
kind from the sentient principle in the lower animals. 

Secondly. The universal recurrence of the facts on 
which Natural Theology rests deserves to be regarded 
as increasing the interest of this science. The other 
sciences, those of Physics at least, are studied only 
when we withdraw from all ordinary pursuits, and 
give up our meditations to them. Those which can 
only be prosecuted by means of experiment can never 
be studied at all without some act of our own to alter 
the existing state of things, and place nature in cir- 
cumstances which force her, by a kind of question, as 
Lord Bacon phrases it, to reveal her secrets. Even 
the sciences which depend on observation have their 
fields spread only here and there, hardly ever lying in 
our way, and not always accessible when we would 
go out of our way to walk in them. But there is 
no place where the evidences of Natural Religion 
are not distributed in ample measure. It is equally 
true that those evidences continually meet us in all 
the other branches of science. A discovery made in 
these almost certainly involves some new proofs of de- 
sign in the formation and government of the universe. 

Thirdly^ and chiefly. Natural Theology stands far 
above all other sciences from the sublime and elevating 
nature of its objects. It tells of the creation of all things 
— of the mighty power that fashioned and that sustains 
the universe — of the exquisite skill that contrived the 
wings and beak, and feet of insects invisible to the na- 
ked eye — and that lighted the lamp of day, and 
launched into space comets a thousand times larger 
than the earth, whirling a million of times swifter than 
a cannon ball, and burning with a heat which a thou- 
sand centuries could not quench. It exceeds the bounds 
of material existence, and raises us from the crea- 



119 

tion to the Author of Nature. Its office is, not only to 
mark what things are, but for what purpose they were 
made by the infinite wisdom of an all-powerful being, 
with whose existence and attributes its high prero- 
gative is to bring us acquainted. If we prize, and 
justly, the delightful contemplations of the other sci- 
ences; if we hold it a marvellous gratification to have 
ascertained exactly the swiftness of the remotest pla- 
nets — the number of grains that a piece of lead would 
weigh at their surfaces — and the degree in which each 
has become flattened in shape by revolving on its axis; 
it is surely a yet more noble employment of our facul- 
ties, and a still higher privilege of our nature, hum- 
bly, but confidently, to ascend from the universe to its 
Great First Cause, and investigate the unity, the per- 
sonahty, the intentions, as well as the matchless skill 
and mighty power of him who made and sustains and 
moves those prodigious bodies, and all that inhabit 
them. 

Now, all the gratification of which we have been 
treating is purely scientific, and wholly independent of 
any views of practical benefit resulting from the sci- 
ence of Natural Theology. The pleasure in question 
is merely that double gratification which every science 
bestows — namely, the contemplation of truth, in tracing 
resemblances and differences, and the perception of the 
evidence by which that truth is established. Natural 
Theology gives this double pleasure, like all other 
branches of science — like the mathematics — like phy- 
sics — and would give it if we were beings of an order 
different from man, and whose destinies never could 
be affected by the truth or the falsehood of the doc- 
trines in question. Nay, we may put a still stronger 
case, one analogous to the instance given above of the 
pleasure derived from contemplating some fine inven- 
tion of a surgical instrument. Persons of such lives as 
should make it extremely desirable to them that there 
was no God and no Future State, might very well, as 
philosophers, derive gratification from contemplating 



120 

the truths of Natural Theology, and from following the 
chain of evidence by which these are established, and 
might in such sublime meditation, find some solace to 
the pain which reflection upon the past, and fears of 
the future are calculated to inflict upon them. 

But it is equally certain that the science derives an 
interest incomparably greater from the consideration 
that we ourselves who cultivate it, are most of all con- 
cerned in its truth — that our own highest destinies 
are involved in the results of the investigation. This, 
indeed, makes it, beyond all doubt, the most interest- 
ing of the sciences, and sheds on the other branches 
of philosophy an interest beyond that which other- 
wise belongs to them, rendering them more attractive 
in proportion as they connect themselves with this 
grand branch of human knowledge, and are capable 
of being made subservient to its uses. See only in 
what contemplations the wisest of men end their most 
sublime inquiries! Mark where it is that a Newton 
finally reposes after piercing the thickest veil that 
envelops nature — grasping and arresting in their 
course the most subtle of her elements and the swift- 
est — traversing the regions of boundless space — ex- 
ploring worlds beyond the solar way — giving out the 
law which binds the universe in eternal order! He 
rests, as by an inevitable necessity, upon the contem- 
plation of the great First Cause, and holds it his high- 
est glory to have made the evidence of his existence, 
and the dispensations of his power and of his wisdom, 
better understood by men. 

If such are the peculiar pleasures which appertain 
to this science, it seems to follow that those philoso- 
phers are mistaken who would restrict us to a very 
few demonstrations, to one or two instances of design, 
as suflicient proofs of the Deity's power and skill in 
the creation of the world. That one sufficient proof 
of this kind is in a certain sense enough cannot be de- 
nied: a single such proof overthrows the dogmas of 
the atheist and dispels the doubts of the skeptic; but 



121 

is it enough to the gratification of the contemplative 
mind? The great multiplication of proofs undeniably 
strengthens our positions; nor can we ever affirm re* 
specting the theorems in a science, not of necessary but 
of contingent truth, that the evidence is sufficiently co* 
gent without variety and repetition. But, independent- 
ly altogether of this consideration, the gratification is 
renewed by each instance of design which we are led 
to contemplate. Each is difierent from the other. 
Each step renews our delight. The finding that at 
every step we make in one science, and with one ob- 
ject in view, a new proof is added to those before 
possessed by another science, affords a perpetual source 
of new interest and fresh enjoyment. This would be 
true if the science in question were one of an ordinary 
description. But when we consider what its nature is 
— how intimately connected with our highest con- 
cerns — how immediately and necessarily leading to 
the religious adoration of the Supreme Being — can 
we doubt that the perpetually renewed proofs of his 
power, wisdom, and goodness tend to fix and to trans- 
port the mind, by the constant nourishment thus af- 
forded to feelings of pure and rational devotion? It 
is, in truth, an exercise at once intellectual and moral, 
in which the highest faculties of the understanding 
and the warmest feelings of the heart alike partake, 
and in which not only without ceasing to be a philo- 
sopher the student feels as a man, but in which the 
more warmly his human feelings are excited, the more 
philosophically he handles the subject. What delight 
can be more elevating, more truly worthy of a ration- 
al creature's enjoyment, than to feel wherever we 
tread the paths of scientific inquiry, new evidence 
springing up around our footsteps — new traces of di- 
vine intelligence and power meeting our eye! We 
are never alone; at least, like the old Roman, we are 
never less alone than in our solitude. We walk with 
the Deity; we commune with the great First Cause, 
who sustains at every instant what the word of his 

11* 



122 

power made. The delight is renewed at each step 
of our progress, though as far as evidence is concerned 
we have long ago had proof enough. But that is no 
more a reason for ceasing to contemplate the subject 
in its perpetually renovated and varied forms, than 
it would be a reason for resting satisfied with once 
seeing a long lost friend that his existence had been 
sufficiently proved by one interview. Thus, instead 
of restricting ourselves to the proofs alone required 
to refute atheism or remove skepticism, we should 
covet the indefinite multiplication of evidences of de- 
sign and skill in the universe, as subservient in a 
threefold way to purposes of use and of gratification: 
jiTstj as strengthening the foundation whereupon the 
system reposes; secondly^ as conducive to the ordinary 
purposes of scientific gratification, each instance being 
afresh renewal of that kind of enjoyment; and thirdly j 
as giving additional ground for devout, pleasing and 
wholesome adoration of the Great First Cause, who 
made and who sustains all nature. 

It is, therefore, manifest that instead of resting satis- 
fied with details and reasons barely sufficient to prove 
the existence of design in the universe, the gratifica- 
tion of a laudable scientific curiosity, and the proper 
indulgence of rational devotion, require that every 
occasion should be taken of exhibiting those evidences 
upon which the system of Natural Theology rests. 
The professed treatises upon that science do not suffice 
for this purpose, although they ought unquestionably 
to enter largely, and with very great variety of illus- 
tration, into the proofs; but each several branch of 
science natural and moral, should have a constant 
reference to this, and should never fail to apply its 
peculiar doctrines towards the proof and the illustra- 
tion of the doctrines of Natural Theology. . 



123 



SECTION III. 

OF THE CONNEXION BETWEEN NATURAL AND REVEALED 
RELIGION. 

The ordinary arguments against Natural Theology 
with which we have to contend are those of atheists 
and skeptics; of persons who deny the existence of a 
First Cause, or who involve the whole question in 
doubt ; of persons who think they see a balance of rea- 
son for denying the existence of a Deity, or who con- 
sider the reasons on both sides as so equally poised that 
they cannot decide either way. An objection of a very 
different nature has sometimes proceeded, unexpected- 
ly, from a very different quarter — the friends of Re- 
velation — who have been known, without due reflec- 
tion, to contend that by the light of unassisted reason 
we can know absolutely nothing of God and a Future 
State. They appear to be alarmed lest the progress 
of Natural Religion should prove dangerous to the ac- 
ceptance of Revealed; lest the former should, as it were, 
be taken as a substitute for the latter. They argue 
as if the two systems were rivals, and whatever credit 
the one gained, were so much lost to the other. They 
seem to think that if any discovery of a First Cause 
and another world were made by natural reason, it 
would no longer be true that "life and immortahty 
were brought to light by the gospel." Although these 
reasoners are neither the most famous advocates of re- 
velation, nor the most enlightened, we yet may do well 
to show the groundlessness of the alarms which they 
would excite. 

1. In the first place, it is worthy of our considera- 
tion that the greatest advocates of Natural Theology 
have always been sincere and even zealous Christians. 
The names of Ray, Clarke, Derham, Keill, Paley, at- 



124 

test the truth of this assertion. None of these was 
likely to lend his support to any system the evidence 
of which put the outworks of Christianity in jeopardy* 
Some of them, as Clarke and Paley, have signalized 
themselves as strenuous and able defenders of the truth 
of Revelation. Derham actually delivered his cele- 
brated work on the great truths of Natural Theology 
cis a series of sermons preached in Bow Church, at a 
Lecture for the promotion of the Christian religion, 
founded by Mr. Boyle. At the same Lecture, in St. 
Paul's, w^as delivered Dr. Clarke's argument H priori^ 
and indeed his whole " Evidence of Natural and Re- 
vealed Religion," as well as his "Demonstration of the 
Being and Attributes of God ;" and Dr. Bentley, the 
first preacher upon that foundation, delivered in like 
manner as sermons his argument in favour of Natural 
Religion from the structure of the human mind, the 
animal body, and the universe at large. 

This Lecture was expressly founded by Mr. Boyle 
in support of the Christian religion; and no reference 
to Natural Theology, apart from its uses in supporting 
Revelation, is to be found in the ternis of the gift. 
The subject of the eight sermons is to be, in the words 
of the w^ill, "The proof of the Christian religion against 
notorious infidels, viz. atheists, theists. Pagans, Jews, 
and Mahometans, not descending lower to any contro- 
versies that are among Christians themselves.^^ Yet 
the great Christian divines whom we have named so 
construed these words as to include a proof of Natu- 
ral Religion among the most essential arguments for 
Christianity; and almost as many of the sermons 
preached at the Boyle Lecture, during the first forty 
years after its foundation, relate to the doctrines of 
Natural Theology as to those of Revelation. So far 
w^ere the divines of that day from holding the two 
subjects as hostile to each other.* 

* If any one will read the vituperation rather than sermon ag-ainst 
Infidels with which Dr. Bentley commences his discourses upon Na- 



125 

2. But, secondly J Natural Theology is most service- 
able to the support of revelation. All the soundest 
arguments in behalf of the latter pre-suppose the for- 
mer to be admitted. Witness the profound work of 
Butler, his " Analogy of Natural and Revealed Re- 
ligion to the Order of Nature,'^ the most argumenta- 
tive and philosophical defence of Christianity ever 
submitted to the world. But Lardner and Paley, and 
all other writers on the same side, abound in re- 
ferences to Natural Theology, and in the course of 
their reasonings assume its truths as postulates. 

We may suppose that those practised controversia- 
lists and zealous Christians did not make such as- 
sumptions gratuitously. We may safely give them 
credit for not resting their case upon more postulates 
than the exigency of the argument required. Such a 
course if unnecessary would have been most unskilful, 
and might have proved dangerous by opening the 
door to new attacks. But they are not peculiar in 
their view of the subject. Boyle and Newton were 
as sincerely attached to Christianity as any men in 
any age, and they are likewise the most zealous advo- 
cates of Natural Religion. Lord Bacon, though im- 
bued perhaps with a certain degree of prejudice on 
this subject, but of a philosophical and not a polemical 
origin, distinctly places the truth of Natural Religion 
at the entrance of theological study, and regards the 
evidences of Revelation as founded upon the previous 
demonstration of Natural Theology. " The latter/' 
he says, " is the key of the former, and opens our 
understanding to the genuine spirit of the scriptures, 
but also unlocks our belief, so that we may enter upon 
the serious contemplation of the divine Power, the 
characters of which are so deeply graven in the works 
of the creation.^^* He elsewhere also lays it down 
as clear that atheism is to be refuted not by miracles, 

tural Religion, he will see no reason to doubt the zeal for Christianity 
of that most learned preacher, 
* De Di£^. et Aug*, lib. i. 



126 

but by the contemplation of nature, and accurately 
takes the distinction between Revelation and Natural 
Religion; that the former declares the will of God as 
to the worship most acceptable, while the latter teaches 
his existence and powers, but is silent as to a ritual. "^^ 

3. Accordingly we proceed a step farther, and as- 
sert, thirdly^ that it is a vain and ignorant thing to sup- 
pose that Natural Theology is not necessary to the 
support of Revelation. The latter may be untrue, 
though the former be admitted. It may be proved, 
or allowed, that there is a God, though it be denied 
that he sent any message to man, through men or 
other intermediate agents; as indeed the Epicurians 
believed in the existence of the gods, but held them 
to keep w^holly aloof from human affairs, leaving the 
world, physical as well as moral, to itself, without the 
least interference in its concerns.! But Revelation 
cannot be true if Natural Religion is false, and cannot 
be demonstrated strictly by any argument, or estab- 
lished by any evidence without proving or assuming 
the latter. A little attention to the subject will clear- 
ly prove this proposition. 

Suppose it were shown by incontestable proofs that 
a messenger sent immediately from heaven had ap- 
peared on the earth; suppose, to make the case more 
strong against our argument, that this messenger ar- 
rived in our own days, nay appeared before our eyes, 
and showed his divine title to have his message be- 
lieved, by performing miracles in our presence. No 
one can by possibility imagine a stronger case; for it 
excludes all arguments upon the weight or the falli- 
bility of testimony; it assumes all the ordinary difficul- 

* De Dig", lib. iii. c. 2. 

f It is siiig-ular, too, that this sect inculcated religious duties to- 
wards the gods, whom nevertheless they neither believed to be the 
creators nor governors of the universe. Cicero says of its founder, 
*' De sanctitate, de pietate adversus deos libros scripsit Epicurus. At 
quomodo in his loquitur? ut Coruncanum, ut Scsevolam, Pontifices 
maximos te audire dicas." "You would think," says he, "to hear 
liLim, it was our high-priests descanting upon hoUness and piety." 



}2i 

ties in the way of Revelation to be got over. Now, 
even this strong evidence would not at all establish 
the truth of the doctrine promulgated by the messen- 
ger ; for it would not show that the story he brought 
was worthy of belief in any one particular except his 
supernatural powers. These would be demonstrated 
by his working miracles. All the rest of his statement 
would rest on his assertion. But a being capable of 
working miracles might very well be capable of de- 
ceiving us. The possession of power does not of ne- 
cessity exclude either fraud or malice. This messen- 
ger might come from an evil as well as from a good 
being; he might come from more beings than one; or 
he might come from one being of many existing in the 
universe. When Christianity was first promulgated, 
the miracles of Jesus were not denied by the ancients; 
but it was asserted that they came from evil beings, 
and that he was a magician. Such an explanation 
was consistent with the kiiid of belief to which the 
votaries of polytheism were accustomed. They were 
habitually credulous of miracles and of divine inter- 
positions. But their argument was not at all unphi- 
losophical. There is nothing whatever inconsistent 
in the power to work miracles bein^ conferred upon 
a man or a minister by a supernatural being, who is 
either of limited power himself, or of great malignity, 
or who is one of many such beings. Yet it is certain 
that no means can be devised for attesting the super- 
natural agency of any one, except such a power of 
working miracles; therefore, it is plain that no suffi- 
cient evidence can ever be given by direct Revela- 
tion alone in favour of the great truths of religion. 
The messenger in question might have power to work 
miracles without end, and yet it would remain un- 
proved, either that God was omnipotent, and one, and 
benevolent, or that he destined his creatures to a future 
state, or that he had made them such as they are in 
their present state. All this might be true, indeed; 
but its truth would rest only on the messenger's as- 
sertion, and upon whatever internal evidence the na- 



128 

tnre of his communication afforded; and it might be 
false, without the least derogation to the truth of the 
fact that he came from a superior being, and pos- 
sessed the power of suspending the laws of nature. 

But the doctrines of the existence of a Deity and 
of his attributes, which Natural Religion teaches, pre- 
clude the possibility of such ambiguities and remove 
all those difficulties. We thus learn that the Creator 
of the world is one and the same; and we come to 
know his attributes, not merely of power, which alone 
the direct communication by miracles could convey, 
but of wisdom and goodness. Built upon this foun- 
dation, the message of Revelation becomes at once 
unimpeachable and- invaluable. It converts every 
inference of reason into certainty, and above all, it 
communicates the Divine Being's intentions respect- 
ing our own lot, with a degree of precision which 
the inferences of Natural Theology very imperfectly 
possess. This, in truth, is the chief superiority of 
Revelation, and this is the praise justly given to the 
Gospel in sacred writ — not that it teaches the being 
and attributes of God, but that it brings life and im- 
mortality to light. 

It deserves, hc^wever, to be remarked, in perfect 
consistency with the argument which has here been 
maintained, that no mere revelation, no direct mes- 
sage, however avouched by miraculous gifts, could 
prove the faithfulness of the promises held out by the 
messenger, excepting by the slight inference which 
the nature of the m.essage might afford. The portion 
of his credentials which consisted of his miraculous 
powers could not prove it. For unless we had first 
ascertained the unity and the benevolence of the being 
that sent him, as those miracles only prove power, 
he might be sent to deceive us; and thus the hopes 
held out by him might be delusions. The doctrines 
of Natural Religion here come to our aid, and secure 
our belief to the messenger of one Being, whase 
goodness they have taught us to trust 



129 

4. In other respects, the services of Natural Religion 
are far from inconsiderable, as subsidiary to, and co- 
operative with, the great help of Revelation. Thus, 
were our whole knowledge of the Deity drawn from 
Revelation, its foundation must become weaker and 
weaker as the distance in point of time increases from 
the actual interposition. Tradition, or the evidence of 
testimony, must of necessity be its only proof: for per- 
petual miracles niust be wrought to give us evidence by 
our ov/n senses. Now, a perpetual miracle is a contra- 
diction in terms ; for the exception to, or suspension of, 
the laws of nature so often repeated would destroy the 
laws themselves, and with the laws the force of the ex- 
ception or suspension. Upon testimony, then, all Re- 
velation must rest. Every age but the one in which 
the miracles were wrought, and every country but the 
one that witnessed them — indeed, all the people of 
that country itself save those actually present — must 
receive the proofs which they afford of Divine inter- 
position upon the testimony of eye- witnesses, and of 
those^to whom eye-witnesses told it. Even if the mi- 
racles were exhibited before all the nations of one age, 
the next must believe upon the authority of tradition; 
and if we suppose the interposition to be repeated from 
time to time, each repetition would incalculably weaken 
its force, because the laws of nature, though not wholly 
destroyed, as they must be by a constant violation, would 
yet lose their prevailing force, and each exception 
would become a slighter proof of supernatural agency. 
It is far otherwise with the proofs of Natural Religion ; 
repetition only strengthens and extends them. We 
are by no means affirming that Revelation would lose 
its sanction by lapse of time, as long as it had the per- 
petually new and hving evidence of Natural Religion to 
support it. We are only showing the use of that evi- 
dence to Revelation, by examining the inevitable con- 
sequences of its entire removal, and seeing how^ ill sup- 
ported the truths of Revelation would be, if the prop 
were withdrawn which they borrow from Natural 

13 



130 

Theology: for then they would rest upon tradition 
alone.* 

In truth, it is with Natural Religion as with many 
of the greatest blessings of our sublunary lot: they 
are so common, so habitually present to and enjoyed 
by us, that we become insensible of their value, and 
only estimate them aright when we lose them, or 
fancy them lost. Accustomed to handle the truths of 
Revelation in connexion with, and in addition to, 
those of Natural Theology, and never having ex- 
perienced any state of mind in which we were with- 
out the latter, we forget how essential they are to the 
former. As we are wont to forget the existence of 
the air we constantly breathe until put in mind of it 
by some violent change threatening suffocation, so it 
requires a violent fit of abstraction to figure to our- 
selves the state of our belief in Revelation were the 
lights of natural religion withdrawn. The existence 
and attributes of a God are so familiarly proved by 
every thing around us, that we can hardly picture to 
ourselves the state of our belief in this great truth, if 
we only knew it by the testimony borne to miracles, 
which, however authentic, were yet wrought in a re- 
mote age and distant region. t 

5. The use of Natural Theology to the believer in 
Revelation is equally remarkable in keeping alive the 
feelings of piety and devotion. As this topic has oc- 
curred under a former head, it is only to be presented 
here in close connexion with Revealed Religion. It 
may be observed, then, that even the inspired penmen 
have constant recourse to the views which are derived 
from the contemplation of nature when they would 
exalt the Deity by a description of his attributes, or 



* Note V. 

•j- Mr. Locke has said, upon a similar question, *^ He that takes 
away Reason to make way for Revelation puts out tlie light of both; 
and does much about the same as if he would persuade a man to put 
out his eyes, the belter to receirve the remote light of an invisible star 
by a telescope."-— (Human Understanding, iv. 19, 4.) 



131 

inculcate sentiments of devotion towards him. " How 
excellent/' says the Psalmist, " is thy name in all the 
earth; thou hast set thy glory above the heavens. 
I will consider the heavens, even the work of thy 
fingers; the moon and the stars which thou hast or- 
dained/' See also that singularly beautiful poem the 
139th Psalm; and the Book of Job, from the 38th to 
the 41st chapter. 

It is remarkable how little is to be found of par- 
ticularity and precision in any thing that has been re- 
vealed to us respecting the nature of the Godhead. 
For the wisest purposes it has pleased Providence to 
veil in awful mystery almost all the attributes of the 
Ancient of Days beyond what natural reason teaches. 
By direct interposition, through miraculous agency, 
we become acquainted with his will, and are made 
more certain of his existence; but his peculiar attri- 
butes are nearly the same in the volume of nature and 
in that of his revealed word. 



NOTES 



12 



NOTES. 

Note L 

Of the Classification of the Sciences, 

I AM abundantly sensible, not only, as is stated in the 
text, how imperfect all such classifications must be, but 
that grave objections may be urged against the one I have 
adopted, and particularly against the threefold division of 
physical, psychological, and ethical or moral. It may be 
said that one part of the moral branch of Natural Theo- 
logy belongs to psychology — namely, the arguments 
drawn from the nature of the mind in favour of a future 
state; and that this part ought therefore to have been 
classed with the second division of the ontological branch 
— namely, the psychological. But it must be borne in 
mind that the two first divisions, comprising the ontolo- 
gical branch, are confined to the doctrine of existences — 
the investigation of the Deity's existence and attributes ; 
while the whole of the third division, or] second branch, 
relates to the prospects of man with respect to his soul ; 
and consequently, although the arguments respecting these 
prospects are partly of a psychological nature, yet they 
relate to the future, and not at all to the past or present — 
not at all to the doctrine of existence or attributes. This 
is therefore a sufficiently distinct ground for the separa- 
tion. In all such classifications we should be guided by 
views of convenience, rather than by any desire to attain 
perfect symmetry; and that arrangement may be best 
suited to a particular purpose which plants the same things 
in one order, and separates them and unites them in one 
way, when an arrangement which should dispose those 
things differently might be preferable, if we had another 



136 

purpose to serve. Thus the three divisions of physics, 
psychology, and morals may be convenient for the pur- 
poses of Natural Theology, and yet it may not so well 
suit the purposes of general science ; although I own my 
opinion to be in favour of that classification for such gene- 
ral purposes also, keeping always in mind that whatever 
portion of moral science (using the term in its more ordi- 
nary sense) belongs to ontology comes within the second, 
and not the third, subdivision, and that the third deals 
with deontology alone. 

The various classifications which, in ancient as well as 
modern times, have been made of the sciences, are well 
calculated to illustrate the difficulty of a perfect arrange- 
ment. The Greek philosophers distinguished them into 
physics, ethics, and logic. Under the first head was 
comprehended both the nature of mind and of the Deity ; 
consequently, under ph,ysics were classed what we now 
term psychology and theology, as well as natural philo- 
sophy. Mr. Locke mainly adopted the same order when 
he ranged the objects of science into physical, practi- 
cal, and logical {jpva-iityi, Tr^cticTlKyj, a-yijuiiariKH, OY KoyiKu) ', Or, 

1. Things in themselves knowable, whether God himself, 
angels, spirits, bodies ; or their afiections, as number, 
figure, &c. 2. Actions, as ihey depend upon us in order 
to happiness ; and 3. The use of signs, in order to know- 
ledge. Thus, like the Greek philosophers, he classed 
natural philosophy, psychology, and theology under one 
head; but as he only stated ethics to be " the most con- 
siderable of the second head," it may be doubtful whether 
or not he included under it any practical application of the 
natural branches of the first head. One thing, too, is 
quite clear in this arrangement, — that pure mathematics 
becomes part of the science of ontology — that is, of exist- 
ences, natural and mental ; and yet it bears a more close 
relation to the third, or logical division. It certainly ap- 
pears somew^hat violent to class fluxions with anatomy, 
metallurgy with psychology, and entomology with the- 
ology ; while we make separate heads of ethics and logic. 
But yet more violent is M. Turgot's classification, by 
which he ranges, under the head of physical sciences, 



137 

not only natural philosophy and metaphysics by name, 
but also logic and history. To thus classing history there 
is, indeed, a double objection. Not only is it doing unne- 
cessary violence to common language, to make that which 
bears no exclusive relation to natural objects a part of 
physics, but to make history a science at all is perhaps 
yet more objectionable, unless in the sense in which in- 
ductive science is deemed historical by Lord Bacon — 
being considered by him as the history of facts. But 
this, too, is incorrect ; for the history or record of facts 
is only the foundation of inductive science, which con- 
sists in the comparison, or reasoning from the compari- ^ 
son, of these facts, and marking their differences and re- 
semblances ; whereas history is applicable to all events 
and all sciences, being merely the record of things that 
have happened, of whatever kind, and implies no reason- 
ing or comparing at all. Why is poetry, music, painting, 
omitted in such arrangement as that of Turgot? They 
are as much sciences as history. 

Lord Bacon's own scientific classification is certainly 
not distinguished by peculiar felicity. He divides science 
into three parts, according as its object is the Deity, Man, 
or External Nature, naming these branches — Natural 
Theology, Human Philosophy, and Natural Philosophy. 
Hence, while intellectual and moral philosophy are sepa- 
rated from theology, they are both classed with anatomy 
and medicine ; while optics and acoustics, merely from 
their relation to the human eye and the human ear, are 
ranged under the same head with ethics, and separated 
from natural philosophy. Hence, too, the chemical na- 
ture of the blood and bones of man is made one part of 
one division — Human Philosophy ; while the chemical 
nature of the blood and bones of all other animals is 
ranged under another head — Natural Philosophy. As for 
logic and the mathematics, they are treated as a kind of 
appendix to physics, rather than as deserving the name 
of sciences. 

12^ 



138 



Note IL 

Of the Psychological Argument from Final Causes. 

Dr. Clarke maintains that the evidences of design are 
much more to be traced in the natural than in the moral 
world ; but he plainly means by this proposition, not so 
much to compare the proofs of Divine wisdom exhibited 
in the phenomena of the material with those exhibited in 
the phenomena of the intellectual world, as to show that 
the designs or intentions of the Deity are more easily per- 
ceived in the arrangements of the world with which we 
are most conversant, than his plans for our happiness, and 
his general intentions respecting our fate, are to be infer- 
red from moral considerations. It is, however, to be re- 
marked that, like all other reasoners upon Natural Theo- 
logy, Dr. Clarke confines his attention entirely to physi- 
cal, and never adverts to psychological proofs. 

Mr. Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments^ has 
interspersed with his reasonings upon the constitution of 
the affections and feelings, reflections upon the purposes 
to which they are subservient; and Mr. Stewart's writ- 
ings afford frequent instances of his attention having been 
alive to the soundness of the same speculation. Indeed, 
no one who had the accurate and just views of the nature 
of the sentient principle, and the steady conviction of its 
separate and immaterial nature, which prevail through all 
Ixis writings, could fail to perceive the application of the 
argument a ijosteriori to our mental constitution. But 
these indications of this admirable writer's attention to the 
subject are accidental, and scattered through his works ; 
and it is exceedingly to be regretted, nor, indeed, very 
easily to be explained, that he should have entirely omit- 
ted all reference to the constitution of our mental faculties 
in the otherwise full and able treatise upon Natural Eeli- 
gion which forms so large a part — ^above one third — of 
his ' Philosophy of the Active Powers.' With the excep- 
tion of a single remark (vol. ii. p. 48), and that only upon 



♦ 139 

the adaptation of our faculties to our external circumstan- 
ces, and a quotation from Locke, which relates more to 
the bodily than to the mental powers, there occurs noth- 
ing whatever upon this important part of the subject in 
that excellent work, where it would have been so pecu- 
liarly appropriate. 

This silence of modern writers upon Natural Theology 
is easily accounted for by the same consideration to which 
Dr. Reid has referred in explaining how the modern scep- 
tics have admitted the existence of appearances of design 
in the universe, and denied what he terms the major pro- 
position — that design may be traced by its effects ; while 
the ancient sceptics, admitting the latter proposition, de- 
nied the former. He considers this as owing to the great 
discoveries in physics made in modern times ; and to the 
same cause may be ascribed the disposition of Natural 
Theologians to confine their attention to the evidences af- 
forded by the material world. The ancients, on the other 
hand, whose progress in Natural Philosophy was ex- 
tremely limited, bestow more attention, and with consi- 
derably greater success, upon Intellectual Philosophy; 
and accordingly we find that they drew their arguments a 
posteriori for the existence of design in the universe as 
much from moral as from physical considerations. 

The discussion held by Socrates with Aristodemus, as 
recorded by Xenophon, is well known. After enume- 
rating the various convenient arrangements of the bodily 

organs, he adds Ov ^oivw fxoviV hgniTZ ru) QesDi-cv a-afAArog iTTifjLikh^ii- 

VSU* CtXA.' (oTTiP fAiyiTTOV iTTl) KM <Tm '^V'^hV K^dLTlTTHV T60 CLvbgCeTrU) iVi^vai* 

rtvoc ytig cdKKov ^cdov 4^/t^ tt^wta juiv dioov, rcev tcl fxiym-cL nctt KOLXXio-rct 
(rvrrdL^civrm^ wQhtai 1<ti uti ; t/ Si (puKov ctxxo n eivBptxTroi, Qzou; BipA7riucv<Ti ; 
TTotA Si 4^/\l'' '^^^ ctvBpcoTrtvyi; iK:tva!Tii):i 7rpi(pvKKciTrio-^cit, « KifAOVy a St-^og, « 
4'/^^? « ^cLKTrn, yi voToig iTriK'.vpna-ctt^ « pa/unv cta-Kna-ctt, « ?rpog /uctBn(rtv iKTTcvu- 
a-sUy n IfTcL ctv eticzvTYi^ n tSu^ n /uaBu^ iKitvampA itrri SiAf/.ijuvyi(rBAt; — 

" Nor has the Deity been satisfied with taking care of 
the body alone ; he has implanted in man what is afar 
greater work to have made — a m.ost excellent sold ; for 
ivhat other animal possesses a mind that can perceive the 
existence of the Gods by whom all these vast and fair 
works have been formed ? What other creature than 
man worships those Gods ? What other intelligence is 



140 

superior to marl's in providing against hunger, and 
thirst, and cold, and heat ? or in curing diseases, or in 
exercising strength, or in cultivating learning, or in 
storing up the recollection of things heard, and seen, 
and learnt ?^^^*— It may be observed here, in passing, 
that Mr*. Stewart, who refers to this passage, has adopted 
the paraphrastic translation by Mrs. Fielding, and it is 
extremely milike the original. Mr. Stewart justly praises 
the "almost divine simplicity" of the whole conversa- 
tion, which is a just eulogy ; but the ti*anslation, although 
well written, little resembles the Greek in that particular. 
The one I have here given is at least faithful. 

In like manner, the discussion with Euthydemus, after 
showing the goodness of the Gods in adapting all things 
^ man's use, closes with mentioning the senses given 
us to* enjoy those gifts of external nature, and, lastly, 
the use of reason. rJs kcii Koyia-jucv ^juiv ^/u^vo-ai, &c. <fcc. 
— '' They have iinplanted reason ifi our nature, ivhereby 
we inquire touching external things ; and, arguing and 
remembering, ive learn the uses of each, and hit upon 
many contrivances for attaining good and avoiding evil. 
Have they not also given us the gift of speech, by which 
we can communicate mutually all we have learnt, and 
thus instruct each other, and make laws, and regulate 
civil polity ?^^^ 

Plato pursues the same course of reasoning. We 
may refer particularly to the tenth and twelfth books of 
the treatise De Legg, Thus, towards the end of the 
latter book, he states the argument for the Deity's exist- 
ence as twofold — the nature of the mind, and the order 
of the worldly system. The first of his reasons is drawn 
from considering the qualities of the mind; its greater 
antiquity than that of the body and its immortality ; 
for the Platonists certainly considered immortality to be 
so much of the essence of mind as to deduce from, thence, 
as the less clear proposition, the existence of a Deity. 

The Stoics reasoned in like manner, with an equal 
regard to mental and to natural phenomena. Epictetus, 

* Xeii. Memor. I. iv. 13. f Xen. Memor. IV. iii. 11. 



141 

. after deducing the inference of design from the adapta- 
tions of sensible objects, as of the eye to light, adds, 
correctly and philosophically, that " the constitution of 
tlie understanding, whereby it not only receives impres- 
sions ^through the senses, but also deals with the ideas 
thus received, and combines or composes something out 
of them, proceeding from things that are near to things 
quite remote, proves the existence of an Artificer ; since 
things carrying such marks of contrivance could not," 
he contends, " exist spontaneously, and without design."^ 

The same train of reasoning is followed by Cicero in 
all those parts of his writings in which he treats of the 
existence of a D,eity. Thus the famous passage so often 
quoted from the treatise De Natura Deoriim, ends with 
a reference to our mental constitution, although this part 
of it is not so frequently attended to. " An vero si domum. 
magnam, pulchramque videris, non possis adduci utetiam 
si dominum non videas muribus illam et mustelis sedifica- 
tam putes ; tantum vero ornatum mundi, tantam varieta- 
tem pulchritudinemque rerum celestium, tantam vim et 
magnitudinum maris atque terrarum si tuum ac non 
deorum immortalium domicilium putes, nonne plane de- 
sipere videare?" Thus far as to sensible objects. But 
he proceeds, " Aliud a terra sumsimus, aliud ab humore, 
aliud ab igne, aliud ab aere eo quem spiritu ducimus : illud 
autem quod vincit haec omnia, rationem dico et si placet, 
pluribus verbis, mentem, consilium, cogitationem, pru- 
dentiam ubi invenimus? unde sustulimus ?"t 

And again, in the same book, after speaking at large 
of the structure of the body, and the uses to which its 
various parts are adapted, he adds, " Jam vero animum 
ipsum, memtemque hominis, rationem, consilium, pru- 
dentiam, qui non divina cura perfecta esse perspicit, is 
his ipsis rebus mihi videtur carere." He proceeds to 
show how great a gift reason is from its productions : 
*' Ex quo scientia intelligitur'quam vim habeat, qualis sit, 
qua ne in deo quidem est res ulla praestantior;" and he closes 
with the well-known passage in praise of eloquence. :[: 

* Epict. Enchir. i. 6. ^ De Nat. Deor. ii. 6. t Ibid. ii. 59. 



14!^ 

In the Tusculan Questions he alludes to mind in a dif-< , 
ferent manner. After going through the various provi- 
sions made for human enjoyment in the economy of 
nature, he adds, " Sic mentem hominis quamvis cum non 
videas ut deum non vides, tamen ut deum agnoscis ex 
operibus ejus, sic ex memoria rerum et inventione et 
celeritate motus omnique pulchritudine virtu tis, vim divi- 
nam mentis agnoscito."* 

The course of the argument in which he is engaged in 
this first part of his work, the immortality of the soul, 
leads him to use the phenomena of its faculties for the 
purpose of illustrating its separate existence ; and, there- 
fore, he only enumerates the arrangements of the natural 
world as proofs of Divine agency, and gives those proofs 
not as the main object of the argument, but as introduc- 
tory to his statement of the soul's independent nature. 

In these speculations of the ancient philosophers, we 
cannot find any process of strict inductive reasoning ; and, 
accordingly, the facts are not turned to the best account 
for the purposes of the argument. But this defect ap- 
pears, at the least, as much in the physical as in the 
psychological portion of the reasoning. Indeed the lat- 
ter comes more near to our own philosophy ; and cer- 
tainly we must admit that those old writers upon Natural 
Theology, in the place which they assigned to intellectu- 
al phenomena, pursued a more sound and consistent me- 
thod of philosophising, than the moderns have done when 
speculating upon the same subject. 



Note III. 
Of the Doctrine of Cause and Effect, 

The argument deduced by sceptical writers from Mr. 
Hume's doctrine respecting causation has tended to bring 
some discredit upon the doctrine itself, by raising a pre- 
judice against it. The bad use, however, which is made 

* Tusc. Qu. i. 29. 



143 

of a sound principle is not fairly a matter of charge 
against that principle. The only question is whether or 
not the principle be just in itself; and it cannot be just if 
legitimate reasoning can deduce from it an absurd conse- 
quence. A dangerous consequence, how rigorously so- 
ever following from it, would of course form no reason 
against its reception, though it might justly be made the 
ground of examining very narrowly the foundations upon 
which the doctrine itself rested. 

Mr. Stewart, in a valuable and learned note to the 
" Philosophy of the Human Mind," (vol i., note D,) has 
brought together the authorities, which have all more or 
less not only countenanced, but even forestalled Mr. 
Hume in his position — that we know nothing of causa- 
tion except by observing a constant junction between two 
events or two facts. This is unquestionably true. We 
expect that heat being applied to combustible bodies, they 
will take fire ; and that air being excluded they will cease 
to burn. We expect this, because between the applica- 
tion of heat and the ignition of the heated body, between 
the exclusion of air and the extinction of the fire, we 
have constantly observed the relation of sequence — the 
one event being always followed closely by the other. 
The inference which forms the ground of this expecta- 
tion, forms the ground of our belief that the one event 
occasions the other — that there is between the two a con- 
nexion beyond the mere relation of junction and sequence 
—and that the one, the preceding exent, exerts an influ- 
ence, a force, a power, over the other, and produces the 
other. 

This constant conjunction, therefore, m point of fact, is 
the ground of our belief, and the origin of our ideas of 
causality or causation. So far we must admit the doc- 
. trine in question. That it is the only ground of the be- 
lief, and the only origin of the idea, may admit of some 
doubt. This is the point on which turns the connexion 
between the science of Natural Theology and the contro- 
versy we are now referring to ; and therefore it deserves 
some consideration in the present note. 

1. The mere constant and unvarying succession of two 



144 

events would not of itself be sufficient to make us, even 
in popular language, denominate the one a cause of the 
other. Light uniformly succeeds dark — one o'clock 
always follows twelve ; but no man ever thought of call- 
ing or of deeming night to be the cause of day, or noon 
of afternoon.* Another and a very important experiment 
or observation is required before we pronounce the suc- 
cessive or conjoined events to be related one to the other 
as cause and effect. Not only must the second event 
always have been found to follow the first, but the second 
must never have been observed without the first preced- 
ing it, or at least without some other event preceding it — 
in which case the causation is predicated alike of both 
those preceding events. Thus, the clock pointing to one 
is not reckoned the effect of its having previously pointed 
to twelve ; but it is reckoned the effect of a certain me- 
chanism, namely, a spring unfolding itself, because if the 
spring is prevented from relaxing, the hand no longer 
points ; and so it is also reckoned the effect of a weight 
pulling a cord, because, when that weight is stopped in its 
descent, the whole machinery stops. 

2. But we derive not our notion of causality from even 
this double proof — the positive and negative combined — 
the two observations that one event always follows the 
other, and that it ceases when the other ceases. This 
of itself would only tell us the fact, that when one event 
exists the other exists immediately afterwards and not 
otherwise. Our minds form, whether we will or no, an- 
other idea — not merely that of constant connexion or 
succession, but of the one exerting a power over the other 
by an inherent force ; and this is the idea of causation. 
"Whence do we derive it ? I apprehend only from our con- 
sciousness. We feel that we have a will and a power — 
that we can move a limb, and affect by our own powers, 
excited after our own volition, a change upon external ob- * 

* Mr. Stewart's observation, that day follows night as much as 
night follows day, makes no difference in this illustration : for we 
may suppose the case of a person seeing day for the first time, or 
twelve o'clock for the first time, and the conclusion in the text would 
stiU hold good. 



145 

jects. Now from this consciousness we derive the idea 
of power, and we transfer this idea and the relation on 
which it is founded between our own will and the change 
produced, to the relations between events wholly exter- 
nal to ourselves — assuming them to be connected, as we 
feel our volition and our movements are mutually con- 
nected. 

If it be said that this idea by no means involves that of 
necessary connexion, nothing can be more certain. The 
whole is a question of fact — of contingent truth. Just 
as the world might be so constituted that heat applied 
should not ignite, nor air excluded extinguish — so might 
our volition cease to make our limbs move, as it does 
cease in paralysis. As it is, and because our will has 
hitherto had the power to move our limbs, we have ac- 
quired the idea of power and of causation. But if it had 
always been otherwise, and that no connexion of succes- 
sion had ever existed between our volition and our move- 
ments, I do not see how the idea of power or causality 
could ever have been obtained by us from any observa- 
tion of the sequence of events. The idea of design or 
contrivance, in like manner, must have been wanting to 
us ; and hence, I cannot understand how, but for the con- 
sciousness of power, we could ever have been led to the 
belief in the existence of a First Cause. This is another, 
and, to my mind, a very strong, additional reason for 
resisting the evidences of Natural Theology upon the argu- 
ment a posteriori alone. 

That they are greatly in error who confound, as has 
been too common, causation with necessary connexion, 
and who deny the existence of the relation of causality 
merely because the relation is contingent and not neces- 
sary, is sufficiently manifest. Our ideas of power and of 
causation are solid and well founded, although they only 
refer to a power or a causation which may or may not 
exist. That one event causes another may be a proposi- 
tion quite true, to which we affix a precise and definite 
meaning, and which we have learnt from observation 
and from consciousness, although the order of nature 
might easily have been so constituted as that the two 
events should never have been found in sequence. At 
present the order of nature connects them, and we affirm 

13 



146 

that there exists the relation of cause and effect — a rela- 
tion contingent, however, and not necessary. Of neces- 
sary causation we can by no possibility know any thing; 
but causation may be real enough though contingent. 



Note IV. 

Of the '* Systeme de la Nature^'*^ and the Hypothesis of 
Materialism* 

There is no book of an atheistical description which 
has ever made a greater impression than the famous 
Systeme de la Nature, It bears the impression of Lon- 
don, 1780, but was manifestly printed in France; alsoy 
it purports to be written by Mirabaud, secretary of the 
Academic Fran^aise ; and in a prefatory advertisement 
by the supposed editor, who pronounces a great panegy- 
ric upon the work, enough appears to engender doubts 
of Mirabaud having been its author. He died in 1760; 
and it was twenty years before the work appeared — 
found, says the writer, among a collection of manuscripts 
made by a *' savant curieux de rassembler des produc- 
tions de ce genre." Robinet, the author of another work 
of similar tendency, called De la Nature^ has been at 
different times said to be its author, without any proof, 
or indeed probability ; but the general opinion now as- 
cribes it to the Baron d'Holbach, aided, in all probability, 
by Diderot, Helvetius, and other members of the free- 
thinking society, who frequented the Baron's house, and 
who used to complain of Voltaire's excess of religious 
principle, not unfrequently ridiculing him for his fanati- 
cism. Mirabaud, upon whom this publication most un- 
justifiably charges the book, by placing his name in the 
title-page without any doubt expressed, and reserving the 
doubts for the preface, was a man of unimpeachable integ- 
rity and amiable disposition. He had been educated in 
the College of the Jesuits, and afterwards was preceptor 
to some branches of the royal family; he died at the age 
of eighty-five, universally esteemed for his unblemished 
character, his strict probity, and his attractive manners. 
The Diderots and Grimms, though not perhaps persons 



147 

of abandoned life, were very far from attaining such 
praise : indeed the licentious works that proceeded from 
Diderot's pen attest his deficiency, at least in one branch 
of morals. 

It is impossible to deny the merits of the Systeme de 
la Nature. The "work of a great writer it unquestionably 
is ; but its merit lies in the extraordinary eloquence of the 
composition, and the skill with which words substituted 
for ideas, and assumptions for proofs, are made to pass 
current, not only for arguments against existing beliefs, but 
for a new system planted in their stead. As a piece of 
reasoning, it never rises above a set of plausible sophisms 
— plausible only as long as the ear of the reader being 
filled with sounds, his attention is directed away from the 
sense. The chief resource of the writer is to take for 
granted the thing to be proved, and then to refer back to 
his assumption as a step in the demonstration, while he 
builds various conclusions upon it as if it were complete. 
Then he declaims against a doctrine seen from one point 
of view only, and erects another for our assent, which, 
besides being liable to the very same objections, has also 
no foundation whatever to rest upon. The grand secret, 
indeed, of the author goes even further in petitione prin- 
cipii than this ; for we oftentimes find, that in the very 
substitute which he has provided for the notions of belief 
he would destroy, there lurks the very idea which he is 
combating, and that his idol is our own faith in a new 
form, but masked under difi*erent words and phrases. 

The truth of these statements we are now to examine ; 
but first it may be fitting to state why so much attention 
is bestowed upon this work. The reason is, that its bold 
character has imposed on multitudes of readers, seducing 
some by its tone of confidence, but intimidating others 
by its extreme audacity. It is the only^ work of any 
consideration wherein atheism is openly avowed and 
preached — avowed, indeed, and preached in terms. (See, 
particularly, partii., chap, ii.) This efi'ect of its hardi- 
hood was certainly anticipated by its author; for the 
supposed editor, in his advertisement, describes it, some- 

* The treatise of Robinet, De la JSTature, which, though far less 
eloquent and dexterous, is superior in real merit, has never attracted 
anything like the same notice. 



148 

what complacently, if not boastingly, as ** Touvrage le 
plus hardi et le plus extraordinaire que I'esprit humain 
ait ose produire jusqu'a present." 

The grand object of the book being to show that there 
is no God, the author begins by endeavouring to establish 
the most rigorous materialism, by trying to show that 
there is no such thing as mind — nothing beyond or dif- 
ferent from the material world. His whole fabric is built 
on this foundation ; and it would be difficult to find in 
the history of metaphysical controversies such inconclu- 
sive reasoning, and such undisguised assumptions of the 
matter in dispute as this fundamental part of his system 
is composed of. He begins with asserting that man has 
no means of carrying his mind beyond the visible world ; 
that he is necessarily confined within its limits ; and that 
there exists nothing, and there can exist nothing, beyond 
the boundary which incloses all beings — that is, the ma- 
terial world. Nature, we are told, acts according to laws, 
simple, uniform, invariable, which we discover by expe- 
rience. We are related to Universal Nature by our 
senses, which alone enable us to discover her secrets; 
and the instant we abandon the lessons which those 
senses teach us, we plunge into an abyss where we be- 
come the prey of imagination. 

Thus the very first chapter — the opening of the work 
— has already made the gratuitious assumption of a being 
whom the author calls Nature, without either defining 
what that is, or how he arrived at a knowledge of its ex- 
istence. He has also assumed another existence, that of 
matter, or the material world ; and then he asserts — what 
is absolutely contrary to every day's experience, and to 
the first rudiments of science — that we know, and can 
know, nothing but what our senses tell us. It is a suffi- 
cient answer to ask, how we know anything of mathe- 
matical truth ? And in case a cavil should arise upon ge- 
ometrical science (though it would be but a cavil) we 
shall speak only of analytical ; and then it is certain that 
the whole science of numbers, from the rules of element- 
ary arithmetic up to the highest branches of the modern 
calculus, could by possibility have been discovered by a 
person who had never in his life been out of a dark room 
— -who had never touched any body but his own — nay, 



149 

whose limbs had all his life been so fixed, that he had 
never exercised even upon his own body the sense of 
touch : indeed, we might even go so far as to say, who 
had never heard a sound uttered ; for the primitive ideas 
of number might by possibility have suggested them- 
selves to his mind, and been made the grounds of all fur- 
ther calculations. What becomes now of all our knowledge 
depending on the senses ? But we need not go to so ex- 
treme a case as the one just put ; there would be an end 
of the position we are dealing with, if a person so cir- 
cumstanced could have discovered any one analytical or 
common arithmetical truth. Enough, indeed, is known 
to every one, how moderately soever imbued with mathe- 
matical learning, to satisfy him how little the intimations 
received from the senses have, or can have, to do with the 
whole science of number and quantity. That those inti- 
mations of the senses are themselves not at all of a mate- 
rial nature, we shall presently see. 

After many discussions and much eloquence, in the 
course of which various agents are introduced besides 
Nature, as Necessity, Relation, and so forth, without de- 
finition of their qualities or proof of their existence, — 
we come to the great demonstration that no soul, no 
mind, nothing separate from the body and from matter, 
exists, or indeed can exist : for this book is not content 
with scepticism ; it rests not even satisfied with disproof: 
it affects to show the impossibility of the doctrines which 
it combats ; and while perpetually complaining of dog- 
mas, it is perhaps the most dogmatical work that was 
ever written. The sixth and seventh chapters, but the 
seventh especially, treat of this fundamental doctrine — 
the corner-stone of the whole building. The argument is, 
in fact, a mere vague and unintelligible combination of 
words, as when the author concludes by saying, — The 
result of the whole is, that " the soul, far from being any- 
thing distinguishable from the body, is only the body 
itself regarded relatively to some of its functions, or to 
some of the manners of acting or of being, whereof it is 
capable as long as it enjoys life" — (n'estque ce corps lui 
meme envisage relativement a quelqu'unes de ses fonc- 
tions ou a quelques famous d'etre et d'agir dont il est sus- 
ceptible tant qu'il jouit de la vie.) — Or when he describes 

13* 



150 

those faculties which are vulgarly called intellectual, as 
modes or manners of being and of acting, which result 
from the organization of the body — (les facultes que I'on 
nomme intellectuelles ne sont que des modes ou des fa- 
90ns d'etre et d'agir resultant de 1' organization de notre 
corps.) — Part i. chap. viii. 

But there is still more to be remarked throughout the 
Treatise, an inconceivable forgetfulness of the evidence 
on which each party in the controversy most relies, a con- 
stant assumption of the thing in question, and even an 
involuntary assumption of that very separate and spi- 
ritual existence which it is the author's object to disprove. 

Like all materialists, but far more grossly and dogmat- 
ically than almost any other, the author begins by as- 
suming that Matter exists, that we can have no doubt 
whatever of this, and that any other existence is a thing 
to be proved. Now, what is this matter ? Whence do 
we derive any knowledge of it? How do we assure 
ourselves of its existence ? What evidence at all have 
we respecting either its being or its qualities ? We 
feel, or taste, or smell something — that is, we have cer- 
tain sensations which make us conclude that something 
exists beyond ourselves. It will not do to say beyond 
our bodies ; for our bodies themselves give us the same 
sensations. What we feel is something beyond, or out 
of, or external to, or other than and apart from ourselves 
— that is, from our minds. Our sensations give us the 
intimation of such existences. But what are our sensa- 
tions ? The feelings or thoughts of our minds. Then 
what we do is this : From certain ideas in our minds, 
produced no doubt by, and connected with our bodily 
senses, but independent of, and separate from them, we 
draw certain conclusions by reasoning, and those conclu- 
sions are in favour of the existence of something other 
than our sensations and our reasonings, and other than 
that which experiences the sensations and makes the rea- 
sonings — passive in the one case — active in the other. 
That something is what we call Mind. But plainly, 
whatever it is, we owe it to the knowledge that Matter 
exists : for that knowledge is gained by means of a sens- 
ation or feeling, followed by a process of reasoning ; it 
is gained by the mind having first suffered something, and 



151 

then done something, and, therefore, to say there is no 
such thing as Matter would be a much less absurd infer- 
ence than to say there is no such thing as Mind. The 
very act of inferring, as we do by reasoning, that the ob- 
ject which affects our senses exists apart from ourselves, 
is wholly incapable of giving us any knowledge of the 
object's existence without, at the same time, giving us a 
knowledge of our own — that is, of the Mind's existence. 
An external implies necessarily an internal ; that there 
may be anything beyond or without, there must needs be 
some other thing beyond or without which it is said to 
exist ; that there may be a body which we feel abiding 
separate from us, namely our own body, one part of 
which gives us sensations through another part — there 
must be a we^ an us — that is, a mind. If, as the Systeme 
de la Nature often contends, we have a right to call spirit, 
or soul, or Mind, a mere negation of the qualities of Mat- 
ter, surely this might just as well be retorted by saying, 
that Matter is only a negation of the qualities of Mind. 
But, in truth, the materials cannot stir one step without 
the aid of that Mind whose existence they deny. 

Then what are those qualities of Matter they are always 
speaking about? What but the effects, or the power of 
causing those effects produced by Matter upon the Mind 
through the senses ? A remarkable instance, and a very 
instructive one, of the impossibility of a materialist argu- 
ing legitimately, strictly, or consistently, is to be found 
in the passage of this book, where the argument is as it 
were summed up against the existence of mind: " Lama- 
tiere seule pent agir, sur nos sens sans lesquels il nous 
est impossible que rien se fasse connoitre de nous.^^ 
Here the author, in order to deny the possibility of Mind, 
or any thing else than Matter having an existence, uses, 
in two lines, expressions six times over, all drawn from 
the assumption of a something existing separate from and 
independent of Matter. Our — senses — which — us — 
known — by us — all these are words absolutely without 
meaning if there is nothing but matter in existence ; 
and these are expressions conveying the ideas of which 
this fundamental proposition wholly consists. But that 
the author refers to Bishop Berkeley, as well as Mr. Locke, 
it might have been supposed that he had never been made 



15)2 

aware of the controversy upon the existence of matter. 
Indeed the manner in which he mentions the speculations 
of Berkeley is quite sufficient to show his ignorance of the 
nature of the question, and reminds us forcibly of the 
remark made by D'Alembert, that whoever had not at 
times doubted the existence of matter, might be assured 
he had not any genius for metaphysical inquiries. Would 
any one believe it possible, that an author who could 
dogmatically deny the possibility of Mind existing in any 
form apart from Matter, should be so little competent to 
discuss questions like this, as to speak in these terms of 
Berkeley ? " Que disons nous d'un Berkeley qui s'efforce 
de nous prouver que tout dans ce monde n'est qu'une il- 
lusion chimerique ; que I'univers entier n'existe que dans 
nous-memes, et dans notre imagination," &c. '* Pour 
justifier des opinions si monstrueuses," &c. 

The truth is, that we believe in the existence of Matter, 
because we cannot help it. The inferences of our reason 
from our sensations impel us to this conclusion, and the 
steps are few and short by which we reach it. But the 
steps are fewer and shorter, and of the self-same nature, 
which lead us to believe in the existence of Mind ; for of 
that we have the evidence within ourselves, and wholly 
independent of our senses. Nor can we ever draw the 
inference in any one instance of the existence of matter 
without at the same time exhibiting a proof of the exist- 
ence of mind; for we are, by the supposition, reasoning, 
inferring, drawing a conclusion, forming a belief; there- 
fore there exists somebody, or something, to reason, to 
infer, to conclude, to believe ; that is, we — not any frac- 
tion of matter, but a reasoning, inferring, believing being 
— ^in other words, a Mind. In this sense the celebrated 
argument of Descartes — cogito, ergo sum — had a correct 
and a profound meaning. If, then, scepticism can have 
any place in our system, assuredly it relates to the exist- 
ence of Matter far more than of Mind ; yet the Systems 
de la Nature is entirely founded upon the existence of 
Matter being a self-evident truth, admitting of no proof, 
and standing in need of none. 

We have combated the main body of the argument 
which runs through the whole book, and passed over 
isome of the gross errors, apparently proceeding from igno- 



153 

ranee of physical science, in which it abounds. Of these 
the most notable, no doubt, is that which Voltaire, in his 
Essai sur le Systeme de la Nature, considers (chap, i.) 
as the foundation of the whole theory — the absurd passage 
respecting the formation of eels. Certain it is, that in the 
Second chapter of Part I., the experiment of moistening 
flour, and thereby producing live microscopic insects, is 
referred to as a proof that " inanimate matter can pass 
into life," ** which," adds the book, " is itself but the 
union of notions." No one indeed can accuse Voltaire 
of taking an unfair advantage when he relies on this piece 
of extraordinary ignorance ; but it is not altogether just to 
represent the whole book as resting on this blunder. 

As for the kind of comparisons or analogies by which, 
like all materialists, this writer tries to illustrate his hypo- 
thesis, and by which many materialists really are deceived 
— the mechanism of a watch, for example, consisting of 
parts each separately incapable of producing any result, 
but altogether forming a moving instrument that measures 
the efflux of time — nothing, surely, can be more puerile 
than the attempt to draw from thence an argument in fa- 
vour of the confused, and, when examined closely, unin- 
telligible position that Mind is a modification of Matter, 
or the result of a collocation of material particles. For 
the watch is material, doubtless, both in its whole and in 
each part separately ; the combination never produces any 
effect that is not strictly of a material kind ^ the motions 
and the registration of time resulting from them are all as 
purely mechanical as the form of each part, and each part 
has in it every quality and incident in kind which the 
whole possesses. The difference in the case of Mind is, 
that we have something wholly of a new and peculiar 
kind, and in no respect resembling or belonging to the 
same class with any of the exertions or operations of the 
material parts, the combination of which is alleged by 
the materialist to have given it birth. 

The first part having laid the foundation by disproving 
tlie existence of Mind, the second part of the " Systeme'^ 
proceeds to raise upon it the conclusion that the Deity's 
existence is impossible. This part is much more de- 
clamatory than the former, though often displaying great 
powers of eloquence, and reminding us of the more 



164 

striking parts of Rousseau's early writings, especially his 
paradoxes against knowledge, perhaps in a more choice 
style, and with colouring more subdued. But reasoning 
it contains absolutely none, with the exception of the 
Fourth chapter, where Dr. S. Clarke's argument a pri- 
ori is dissected and refuted — a task, unfortunately, not 
very difficult to accomplish, though it is here done in an 
illegitimate manner. We cannot, however, fail to ob- 
serve, that while the author proposes to go through the 
arguments of the various philosophers who have main- 
tained *the existence of a Deity; and while he does re- 
mark on Descartes, Malebranche, Newton, and Clarke, 
(in a chapter which forms by far the most argumentative 
part of his book,) he never approaches those who have 
treated the question by the argument a posteriori. In 
one place (chap, vii.) he refers to Final Causes, but this 
passage only relates to the subject of man's superiority 
and the arguments of the optimists, and does not at all 
touch upon the evidences of design derived from the 
structure of the universe — the great foundation of Natu- 
ral Theology. It is impossible to suppose the author 
ignorant of the argument a posteriori, for he in one place 
refers to Derham by name. The omission of all reference 
to the most important branch of the subject is one of the 
things that most bring the good faith of this writer into 
question. 

The purpose of this note having been to show how 
the atheistical argument grounded on materialism fails 
when examined in its connexion with the evidences of 
the Mind's independent existence, to pursue further the 
Second Part of the work is unnecessary. But a few re- 
marks are added to show how exactly the same assump- 
tion of the things to be proved prevails here which we 
observed in the First Part. 

The first proposition, and supported at great length, is 
that all the ideas which man has formed of a First Cause 
have resulted from the evils of his lot, and that but for 
human suffering a Deity would never have been thought 
of. " Inquiry and speculation," says the author, '* is 
itself an evil ; and no creature living easy and happy, 
without pain and without wants, would ever give himself 
the trouble and annoyance of arguing on a First Cause. 



155 

But fear and evil, especially pain and death — the terrors 
of earthquake, eclipse, tempest — the horrors of death — 
drove the mind to seek out the source of all these dangers, 
and to appease or disarm its supposed wrath ; and thus 
the sky was peopled with gods and spirits." 

Now, that the fears and the ignorance of men have 
been the fruitful source of polytheism, no one doubts ; 
but it is wholly false to assert that genuine and philoso- 
phical religion could have had no other origin. To affirm 
that, but for their sufferings and fears, men never would 
have encountered the pain or the trouble of speculating 
on a First Cause, is quite contrary to the most obvious 
facts. Those speculations, far from being painful or 
troublesome, are gratifying in the highest degree. As 
well might it be said that all the pleasures of scientific 
discovery and study would have been foregone by all 
men, but for some physical inconvenience that drove them 
into those paths of investigation. Of all writers, the 
authors of the great improvements in physical science are 
they who have been least under the pressure of want, and 
have gained the least by their labours. But such specu- 
lations are productive of the greatest gratification, both to 
the guide who originally points out the way, and to those 
who more humbly follow in his footsteps. So the sub- 
lime contemplations of Natural Theology have engaged 
men's attention and exercised their faculties, wholly inde- 
pendent of any sufferings they were exposed to, or any 
fears they entertained ; and far from being a source of 
pain, this study has ever been found to reward its votaries 
with the purest enjoyment. 

That the study and the knowledge of a Deity would 
have existed without any relation to evil is therefore clear. 
Man's curiosity — his natural desire of tracing the origin 
of what he saw around him — his anxiety to know whence 
he came, and whither he was going, and how the frame 
of the universe was contrived and sustained — would have 
led to the study and knowledge of a Creator without any 
such motives as this book supposes. 

It is remarkable, that in the latter, as in the former 
portion of the work, blind assumptions are not only 
always made, but an entire disregard is shown to the evi- 
dence which often arises out of those very assumptions, 



166 

and proves the truths its author is endeavouring to subvert* 
Thus, in the Second chapter, he says; "Whether the 
human race has always existed on this earth, or that it is 
a recent and transitory production of nature . . . ." Now, 
if it be a recent production of nature, surely this admits the 
creative power — the very divinity the book is contending 
against ; for what can be the meaning of a state of things, 
in which, up to a certain time — z. e. six or seven thousand 
years ago — the human species had no existence, and then 
this species coming into existence, or, as the book says, 
being produced by nature ? What but that a superintend- 
ing power, which had not before acted in this way, now 
for the first time began thus to act ? To call this Nature 
is only changing the name — a Deity is the plain and the 
true meaning, and the only thing which can be meant. 

Indeed, nothing can be more absurd and unreflecting 
than the play made throughout the book with mere words. 
Thus, in the same chapter it is asked — whether a Theo- 
logian " can really be sincere in believing himself to have 
made a step by substituting the vague words spirit, incor- 
poreal substance, divinity, &c., for those intelligible 
words"— what? what words so much less vague and more 
intelligible* than spirit?' — "those intelligible words, mat- 
ter, nature, mobility, necessity !" Now, we may safely 
ask, if all language furnishes two words more vague and 
less intelligible than two out of these four — viz. nature 
and necessity ? But we have, in truth, already shown 
that Matter, as far as the present controversy is concerned, 

* There occurs every where in this book a vague and mysterious 
idea of a force of living power belonging to Matter, and almost a dei- 
Jication of this power, utterly unintelligible ; but in a hater of Deity 
— a derider of all gods — quite marvellous. The passage in which 
this idea is most strikingly announced is the 11th chapter of part ii., 
where he is answering the position that there is no such thing as an 
Atheist in the world — " Si par Athee Ton designe un homme qui 
nieroit I'existence d'une force inherente a la nature et sans laquelle 
I'on ne pent concevoir la JVature, et si c'est a cette force motive • 
qu'on donne le nom de Dieu, il n'existe point d'Athees et le mot 
sous lequel on les designe, n'a*nnonceroit que des fous." — Can any 
one doubt, that after rejecting all reasonable and consistent notions 
of a Deity, this writer had really made unto himself other gods, and 
bowed down before them, and worshipped them % For what is " the 
force inherent in matter 1" and what is " nature,'' and the essence 
of nature, or that thing " without which nature cannot be conceived 1" 



157 

offers no more precise idea to our contemplation than 
Mind or spirit, and that its existence and qualities rest on 
less conclusive evidence than do those of Mind. Possibly 
the readei' of this passage, and especially if he casts his 
eye back upon the former parts of the argument, may be 
inclined to adopt the writer's description of Theology, 
and apply it to the dogmatical Atheism of the Systeme de 
la Nature, 



Note V. 

Of Mr, Hume^s Sceptical Writings, and the Argument 
respecting Providence, 

The two most celebrated and most dangerous treatises 
of this great author, upon religious subjects, are those in 
which he has attacked the foundations of Natural and of 
Revealed Religion — the Essay on Providence and a Fu- 
ture State, and the Essay on Miracles. Others of his 
writings have a similar tendency, and more covertly 
though as surely sap the principles of religion. But the 
two essays to which we have referred are the most im- 
portant writings of this eminent philosopher, because they 
bring his sceptical opinions more directly to bear upon 
the systems of actual belief. 

I. The argument of Tillotson against the doctrine of 
the Real Presence is stated to have suggested that against 
the truth, or rather the possibility of Miracles ; but there 
is this most material difference between the two questions 
— that they who assert the Real Presence drive us to 
admit a proposition contrary to the evidence of our senses, 
upon a subject respecting which the senses alone can de- 
cide, and to admit it by the force of reasonings ultimately 
drawn from the senses — reasonings far more likely to de- 
ceive than they, because applicable to a matter not so 
well fitted for argument as for perception, but reasonings 
at any rate incapable of exceeding the evidence the senses 
give. Nothing, therefore, can be more conclusive than 
Tillotson's argument — that against the Real Presence we 
have of necessity every argument, and of the selfsame 
kind with those which it purports to rest upon, and a 
good deal more besides ; for if we must not believe our 

14 



158 

senses when they tell us that a piece of bread is merely 
bread, what right have we to believe those same senses, 
when they convey to us the words in which the argu- 
ments of the Fathers are couched, or the quotations from 
Scripture itself, to make us suppose the bread is not bread, 
but flesh ? And as ultimately even the testimony of a 
witness who should tell us that he had heard an apostle 
or the Deity himself afiirm the Real Presence, must re- 
solve itself into the evidence of that witness's senses, 
what possible ground can we have for believing that he 
heard the divine afiirmation, stronger than the evidence 
which our own senses plainly give us to the contrary ? 

This is very far from being the case with the argument 
on Miracles. There, the evidence for and the evidence 
against do not coincide in kind, but take opposite direc- 
tions. There, we have not to disbelieve indications of 
the same nature with those upon which our belief is chal- 
lenged. The testimony of witnesses is adduced to prove 
a Miracle, or deviation from the ordinary laws of nature ; 
but, says Mr. Hume, it is more likely that the witnesses 
should be deceived or should deceive, than that the laws 
of nature should be broken ; and at all events we believe 
testimony only because it is a law of nature that men 
should tell the truth. This may very possibly be true ; 
doubtless it is, generally speaking, so likely to be true, 
that the belief of a miracle is, and ought to be, most dif- 
ficult to bring about ; but at least, it is not like the belief 
in the Real Presence : it does not at one and the same 
time assume the accuracy of the indications given by our 
senses, and set that accuracy at nought ; — it does not at 
once desire us implicitly to trust, and entirely to disregard 
the evidence of testimony, as the doctrine of Transub- 
stantiation calls upon us at once to trust and disregard the 
evidence of our senses. 

There are two answers, however, to which the doctrine 
proposed by Mr. Hume is exposed, and either appears 
sufficient to shake it. 

First — Our belief in the uniformity of the laws of na- 
ture rests not altogether upon our own experience. We 
believe no man ever was raised from the dead — not merely 
because we ourselves never saw it, for indeed that would 
be a very limited ground of deduction ; and our belief 



159 

was fixed on the subject long before we had any consi- 
derable experience — fixed chiefly by authority — that is, 
by deference to other men's experience. We found our 
confident belief in this negative position partly, perhaps 
chiefly upon the testimony of others ; and at all events, 
our belief that in times before our own the same position 
held good, must of necessity be drawn from our trusting 
the relations of other men — that is, it depends upon the 
evidence of testimony. If, then, the existence of the 
law of nature is proved, in great part at least, by such 
evidence, can we wholly reject the like evidence when it 
comes to prove an exception to the rule — a deviation from 
the law ? The more numerous are the cases of the law 
being kept — ^the more rare those of its being broken — the 
more scrupulous certainly ought we to be in admitting the 
proofs of the breach. But that testimony is capable of 
making good the proof there seems no doubt. In truth, 
the degree of excellence and of strength to which testi- 
mony may rise seems almost indefinite. There is hardly 
any cogency which it is not capable by possible suppo^ 
sition of attaining. The endless multiplication of wit- 
nesses — the unbounded variety of their habits of thinking, 
their prejudices, their interests — afford the means of con- 
ceiving the force of their testimony augmented ad infini' 
turn, because these circumstances afford the means of 
diminishing indefinitely the chances of their being all 
mistaken, all misled, or all combining to deceive us. Let 
any man try to calculate the chances of a thousand per- 
sons who come from different quarters, and never saw 
each other before, and who all vary in their habits, stations, 
opinions, interests — being mistaken or combining to de- 
ceive us, when they give the same account of an event as 
having happened before their eyes — these chances are 
many hundreds of thousands to one. And yet we can 
conceive them multiplied indefinitely; for one hundred 
thousand such witnesses may all in like manner bear the 
same testimony ; and they may all tell us their story 
within twenty-four hours after the transaction, and in the 
next parish. And yet, according to Mr. Hume's argu- 
ment, we are bound to disbelieve them all, because they 
speak to a thing contrary to our own experience, and to the 
accounts which other witnesses had formerly given us of 



160 

the laws of nature, and which our forefathers had handed 
down to us as derived from witnesses who lived in the 
old time before them. It is unnecessary to add that no 
testimony of the witnesses whom we are supposing to 
concur in their relation contradicts any testimony of our 
own senses. If it did, the argument would resemble Arch- 
bishop Tillotson's upon the real presence, and our disbe- 
lief would be at once warranted.* 

Secondly — This leads us to the next objection to which 
Mr. Hume's argument is liable, and which we have in 
part anticipated while illustrating the first. He requires 
us to withhold our belief in circumstances which would 
force every man of common understanding to lend his as- 
sent, and to act upon the supposition of the story told 
being true. For suppose either such numbers of various 
witnesses as we have spoken of; or, what is perhaps 
stronger, suppose a miracle reported tons, first by a num- 
ber of relators, and then by three or four of the very 
soundest judges and most incorruptily honest men we 
know — men noted for their difficult belief of wonders, 
and, above all, steady unbelievers in Miracles, without 
any bias in favour of religion, but rather accustomed to 
doubt, if not disbelieve — most people would lend an easy 
belief to any Miracle thus vouched. But let us add this 
circumstance, that a friend on his death-bed had been at- 
tended by us, and that we had told him a fact known only 

* Prophecy is classed by Mr. Hume under the same head with 
Miracle — every prophecy being, he says, a miracle. This is not, 
however, quite correct. A prophecy — that is the happening of an 
event which was foretold — may be proved even by the evidence of 
the senses of the whole world. Suppose it had one thousand years 
ago been foretold, that, on a certain day this year, one person of every 
family in the worl-d should be seized with a particular distemper, it 
is evident that every family would be at once certain that the event 
had happened, and that it had been foretold. To future generations 
the fulfilment would no doubt come within the description of a mi- 
racle in all respects. The truth is, that the event happening which 
was foretold may be compared to the miracle ; and Mr. Hume's ar- 
gument will then be, not that there is any thing miraculous in the 
event itself, but only in its happening after it had been foretold. 
Bishop Sherlock wrote discourses on this subject, which Dr. Mid- 
dleton answered : the former denying that prophecy was more ex- 
empt from the scope of the sceptical argument than miracles. On 
the whole, however, it does seem more exempt. 



lei 

to ourselves — something that we had secretly done the 
very moment before we told it to the dying man, and 
which to no other being we had ever revealed — and that 
the credible witnesses we are supposing inform us that 
the deceased appeared to them, conversed with them, re- 
mained with them a day or two, accompanying them, and 
to avouch the fact of his re-appearance on this earth, com- 
municated to them the secret of which we had made him 
the sole depository the moment before his death ; — ac- 
cording to Mr. Hume we are bound rather to believe, not 
only that those credible witnesses deceive us, or that those 
sound and unprejudiced men were themselves deceived, 
and fancied things without real existence, but further, that 
they all hit by chance upon the discovery of a real secret, 
known only to ourselves and the dead man. Mr. Hume's 
argument requires us to believe this as the lesser impro- 
bability of the two — as less unlikely than the rising of one 
from the dead ; and yet every one must feel convinced, 
that were he placed in the situation we have been figuring, 
he would not only lend his belief to the relation, but, if 
the relators accompanied it with a special warning from 
the deceased person to avoid a certain contemplated act, 
he would, acting upon the belief of their story, take the 
warning, and avoid doing the forbidden deed. Mr. Hume's 
argument makes no exception. This is its scope ; and 
whether he chooses to push it thus far or no, all Miracles 
are of necessity denied by it, without the least regard to 
the kind or the quantity of the proof on which they are 
rested ; and the testimony which we have supposed, ac- 
companied by the test or check we have supposed, would 
fall within the grasp of the argument just as much and as 
clearly as any other Miracle avouched by more ordinary 
combinations of evidence. 

The use of Mr. Hume's argument is this, and it is an 
important and a valuable one. It teaches us to sift closely 
and rigorously the evidence for miraculous events. It 
bids us remember that the probabilities are always, and 
must always be, incomparably greater against than for the 
truth of these relations, because it is always far more 
likely that the testimony should be mistaken or false, 
than that the general laws of nature should be suspended. 
Further than thisi the doctrine cannot in soundness of 

14* 



162 

reason be carried. It does not go the length of proving 
that those general laws cannot, by the force of human 
testimony, be shown to have been, in a particular instance, 
and with a particular purpose, suspended. 

It is unnecessary to add, that the argument here has 
only been conducted to one point, and upon one ground 
— namely, to refute the doctrine that a Miracle cannot be 
proved by any evidence of testimony. It is for those who 
maintain the truth of any revelation to show in what man- 
ner the evidence suffices to prove the Miracles on which 
that revelation rests. This treatise is not directed to that 
object; but in commenting upon Mr. Hume's celebrated 
argument, we have dealt with a fundamental objection to 
all Revelation, and one which, until removed, precludes 
the possibility of any such system being established. 

II. The Essay on Miracles being supposed by its au- 
thor sufficient to dispose of Revelation, the Essay on 
Providence and a Future State appears to have been 
aimed as a blow equally fatal to Natural Religion. Its 
merits are, however, of a very superior order. There is 
nothing of the sarcasm so unbecoming on subjects of this 
most serious kind, which disfigures the concluding por- 
tion of the former treatise. The tone is more philosophic, 
and the sceptical character is better sustained. There 
cannot, indeed, be said to prevail through it any thing of 
a dogmatical spirit, and certainly we here meet with none 
of that propensity to assume the thing in question, to in- 
sist upon propositions as proved which have only been 
enunciated, to supply by sounds the place of ideas, which 
we remark in the " Systeme de la Nature.^^ On the 
contrary, the argument, whether sound or not, is of a sub- 
stantial nature ; it is rested on very plausible grounds ; and 
we may the rather conclude that it is not very easily an- 
swered, because, in fact, it has rarely, if ever, been en- 
countered by writers on theological subjects. Neverthe- 
less, it strikes at the root of all Natural Religion, and re- 
quires a careful consideration. 

Mr. Hume does not deny that the reasoning from the 
appearances and operations of nature to the existence of 
an intelligent cause is logical and sound ; at least he ad- 
mits this for argument's sake. But he takes this nice and 
subtle distinction. We are here, he. observes, dealing 



163 

with an agent, an intelligence, a being, wholly unlike all 
we elsewhere see or hitherto have known : our inferen- 
ces, therefore, must be confined strictly to the facts from 
whence they are drawn. When we see a foot-mark im- 
printed'on the sand, we conclude that a man has walked 
there, and that his other foot had likewise left its print, 
which the waves have effaced. But this inference is not 
drawn from the inspection of the foot alone ; it comes 
from a previous knowledge of the human body, of which 
the foot makes a part. Had we never seen that body, or 
any other that walked on feet, the observation of the mark 
in the sand could have led to no other conclusion than that 
some body or thing had been there with a form like the 
mark. So, when we are to reason from the works of na- 
ture to their cause, we are entitled to conclude that a be- 
ing exists whose power and skill created them such as we 
behold them, and consequently that this being is possess- 
ed of skill and power sufficient to contrive and to execute 
those works — that is, those precise works, and no more. 
We have no right to infer that this being has the skill or 
the power to contrive and create one single blade of grass 
or grain of sand beyond what we see. It follows, then, 
that the argument a posteriori only leads to the conclusion 
that a finite and not an infinitely or an indefinitely wise 
and powerful Being exists ; and it further follows that we 
are left without any evidence of his power (much less of 
his intention) to perpetuate our existence after death, as 
well as without any proof of the capacity of the soul to 
receive such a continuation of being after its separation 
from the body. This is the sum of the very ingenious, sub- 
tle, and original argument of Mr. Hume, afibrding a 
mighty contrast to the flimsy sophisms, the declamatory 
assertions, of the French writers, and giving the Natural 
Theologian, it must be allowed, a good deal to answer. 
We have stated it as strongly as we could, in order to 
meet it fully ; and it appears capable of a satisfactory 
answer. 

The whole argument a posteriori rests upon the as- 
sumption, that if we perceive arrangements made, by 
means of which certain effects are produced, and if see- 
ing such arrangements among the works of men, we 
should at once conclude that they were designed to pro- 



164 

duce those effects, we are entiled to say that the arrange- 
ments which we see and which we know not to be 
the work of man, aie the work of an intelligent cause, 
contriving them for the purpose of producing the effects 
observed. In truth, such must needs be the assumption 
on which the argument rests, because we have no other 
knowledge of what design and contrivance are. They 
necessarily bear reference to our own nature and the 
knowledge we have of our own minds, derived from our 
own consciousness and experience ; and of this we have 
treated in the text, Sect. III. and IV. of Part I. 

If we found anywhere a mechanism of any kind, a 
watch for instance, as Paley puts the case, we should at 
once conclude that some skilful and intelligent being had 
been there, and had left his works on the spot. We 
should conclude (indeed this is involved in the former in- 
ference) that he was capable of doing what we saw he 
had done, and that he had intended to produce a particu- 
lar effect by the exercise of his skill ; but we should also 
conclude that he who could do this could repeat the ope- 
ration if he chose, and the probability would be that his 
skill had not been confined to the single exertion of it 
which we had observed. There is nothing peculiar in 
the nature of human workmanship or of the human cha- 
racter to make us draw this conclusion. We arrive at it 
just as we arrive at the inference of design and contriv- 
ance ; we believe in them because we are wholly unable 
to conceive such an adaptation without such an intention ; 
and we are equally unable to conceive that any being, or 
any intelligence, or any power, which had sufficed to 
perform the operation we see, should be confined to that 
single exertion. We can conceive no reason whatever 
why the same power should not be capable of repeating 
the operation. There is nothing peculiar — no limit — 
no sufficient reason, of an exclusive nature, why the same 
power should not be again exercised and with the same 
result. All induction proceeds upon similar grounds. 
It is the generalization of particulars ; it is the conclud- 
ing from a certain limited number of instances to an in- 
definite number — to any number unless circumstances 
arise to restrict the generality — to any number, where 
nothing arises to vary or limit the conclusion. We mix 



165 

an acid and alkali, and form a neutral salt having peculiar 
properties. We pass a sunbeam or the light of a candle 
through a prism, and observe the rays separated into 
lights making certain colours. Why do we conclude 
from hence that all the acid made by burning sulphur, 
in what way soever the sulphur was produced or the 
combustion effected, will be neutralized by soda where- 
soever produced and howsoever obtained, and that their 
union will always make Glauber's salts ? Or, that all 
light, of all kinds, even that obtained by burning newly- 
discovered bodies, as the metal of potassium, unseen, 
unknown before the year 1807, will be found resolvable 
into the seven primary colours ? According to Mr. 
Hume's argument, we have no right to infer that any one 
portion of acid or alkali, save the one we have subjected 
to our experiments, or any light save that of the formerly- 
known combustible bodies, or rather of those classes of 
them on which we had experimented — nay of the indi- 
viduals of those classes which we have burnt — will pro- 
duce the effects we have experienced in our laboratory, 
or in our darkened chamber. In other words, according 
to this argument, all experimental knowledge must stand 
still, generalizing be at an end, and philosophers be con- 
tent never to make a single step, or draw one conclusion 
beyond the mere facts observed by them: in a word, Iti- 
ductive Science must be turned from a process of general 
reasoning upon particular facts, into a bare dry record of 
those particular facts themselves. 

If, indeed, it be said that we never can be so certain of 
the things we infer as we are of those we have observed, 
and on which our inference is grounded, we may admit 
this to be true. But no one therefore denies the value of 
the science which is composed of the inferences. So we 
cannot be so well assured of the Deity's power to repeat 
and to vary and to extend his operations, as we are of his 
having created what we actually observe ; and yet our as- 
surance may be quite sufficient to merit entire confidence. 
Nor will any student of Natural Theology complain if 
the only result of the argument we are combating be to 
place the higher truths of the science but a very little 
lower in point of proof than the inferences of design in 
the works actually examined. The selfsame difference is 



166 

to be found in the inferences composing the other branch- 
es of inductive science, and it in no perceptible degree 
lessens our confidence in the inductive method. 

It has oftentimes been asked, why we believe that the 
same result will happen from the same cause acting in 
the like circumstances — the foundation of all induction ; 
and no answer has ever been given except that we can- 
not help so believing — that the condition of our being'— 
the nature of our minds — compels us so to believe ; and 
we take this as an ultimate fact incapable of being re- 
solved into any fact more general. Can we help believ- 
ing that a being capable of creating what we see and ex- 
amine, is also capable of exercising other acts of skill 
and power ? Can we avoid believing that the same pow- 
er which made all the animals and vegetables on our globe 
suffices to people and provide other worlds in like man- 
ner? Again, can we by any effort bring our minds to 
suppose that this being's whole skill and power were ex- 
hausted by one effort, and that having sufficed to create 
the universe, it ceases to be effective for any other pur- 
pose whatever ? The answer is, that we cannot — that 
we can as soon believe in the sun not rising to-morrow, 
or in his light ceasing to be differently refrangible. 

Much is said in the course of arguments like the pre- 
sent of the word " infinite,^ ^ Whether or not we are 
able to form any precise idea of that which has no bounds 
in power or in duration may be another question. But 
when we see such stupendous exertions of power, upon 
a scale so vast as far to pass all our faculties of compre- 
hension, and with a minuteness at the same time so abso- 
lute, that as we can on the one hand perceive nothing be- 
yond its grasp, so we are on the other hand unable to find 
any thing too minute to escape its notice, we are irresisti- 
bly led to conclude that there is nothing above or below 
such an agent, and that nothing which we can conceive is 
impossible for such an intelligence. The argument of 
Mr. Hume supposes or admits that the whole uni- 
verse is its work, and that animal life is its creation. 
We can no more avoid believing that the same power 
which created the universe can sustain it — that the same 
power which created our souls can prolong their exist- 
ence after death— than we can avoid believing that the 



167 

power which sustained the universe up to the instant we 
are speaking, is able to continue it in being for a thousand 
years to come. But indeed Mr. Hume's argument 
would go the length of making us disbelieve that the Deity- 
has the power of continuing the existence of the creation 
for a day. We are only entitled, according to this argu- 
ment, to conclude that the Deity had the power of work- 
ing the works we have seen and no more. Last spring 
and autumn we observed the powers of nature in vegeta- 
tion, that is, we noted the operations of the Deity in that 
portion of his works, and were entitled, Mr. Hume ad- 
mits, to infer that he had the skill and the power to pro- 
duce that harvest from that seed time, but no more. We 
had, says the argument, no right whatever to infer that 
the Deity's power extended to another revolution of the 
seasons. The argument is this, or it is nothing. Con- 
fining its scope, as Mr. Hume would confine it, to the uni- 
verse as a whole^ and excluding all inferences as to a fu- 
ture state or other worlds, is wholly gratuitous. The 
argument applies to all that we have seen of the already 
past and the actually executed in this universe, and ex- 
cludes all respecting this same universe which is yet to 
come ; consequently if it be good for any thing, it is suffi- 
cient to prove that, although our experience may authorise 
us to conclude that the Deity has skill and power suflii- 
cient to maintain the world in its present state up to this 
hour, yet that experience is wholly insufficient to prove 
that he has either skill or power to continue its existence 
a moment longer. Every one of the topics applied by 
him to a Future State applies to this. If we have no right 
to believe that one exertion of skill proves the author of 
nature adequate to another exertion of a kind no more 
difficult and only a little varied, we can have no light to 
believe that one exertion of skill proves him adequate to 
a repetition of the same identical operation. Now no 
man living carries or can carry his disbelief so far as this* 
Indeed such doubts would not only shake all inductive 
science to pieces, but would put a stop to the whole busi- 
ness of life. And assuredly we may be well contented to 
rest the truths of Natural Theology on the same founda- 
tion upon which those of all the other sciences, as well as 



168 

the practical conduct of all human affairs, must for ever 
repose* 



Note VL 
Of the Ancient doctrines respecting Mijid. 

The opinions of the ancient philosophers upon the na- 
ture of the Soul were not very consistent with them- 
selves ; and in some respects were difficult to reconcile 
with the doctrine of its immateriality which most of them 
maintained. It may suffice to mention a few of those 
theories. 

Plato and his pupil Aristotle may certainly be said to 
have held the Soul's immateriality ; at least, they main-* 
tained that it was of a nature w^holly different from the 
body ; and they appear often to hold that it was unlike 
all matter whatever, and a substance or existence of a 
nature quite peculiar to itself. Their language is nearly 
the same upon this subject. Plato speaks of the ouo-ia cta-a)- 
/uu.rog Kctt voy^rn; — d hodiUss or iucorporeal and intelligent 
being ; and of such existences he says, in one place, q-ct 

aa-OClJL^TCL K±Xkt(TTdL OVrct }CCtl /UiytCTTCt Koyci) fAOVCV, aKXC€ cfs C'jJ'iVt (TCK^Ce^ 

hiKrjTdii, " Things incorporecd being the most excellent and 
the greatest of all, are made manifest by reason alone^ 
a7id no otherwise,'^'' (Politicus.) So again in the Cra* 
tylus, he derives o-a^it from o-cc^icrQAi, and represents the 
body as a prison of the soul, ukova i^icrjuoi-n^iou uvat cw t«? 4^x^^ 
civTo sa? m ret or^iKo/uivct to a-co/uct, following herein the doctrine 
said to have been delivered by Orpheus. Aristotle, too, 
speaks of a being separable and separated from things 
perceivable by the senses — cvo-ict x<^gi(r<nj zcit k^x^^^^/^^^^ "^^^ ^'^' 
Bi)rm» Nevertheless, these philosophers frequently speak 
of the soul as being always, and as it were necessarily, 
connected with matter of some kind or other — ctu ^y;^^ 

€7r/TSTA5/^svj; <ru>iJLafvi, tot2 ^s;/ dLKKcc, rorsSi akko). The SOUl IS Gf/- 

ways annexed to a body, sometimes to one and some- 
times to another,^ — DeLegg, x. Thus Aristotle, {De Gen. 
Jlnim* 11. 4.) i\ ystg 4^/t^ ovcrtA (TcofAdroQ rivoc i<^nri — the soulis the 
substance of some kind of body. And in the Treatise 



169 

Dt JiuiTlfKt^ 11. 2, he says — kcu Sicl tcwto xatx*? vTrox^fx^ti'vounv 

fOT/, o-a^itTo? cfg T/ — '' Those therefore rightly hold ivho 
think that the soul cannot exist without the body, and yet 
that it is not body ; it is not the body^ but someivhat of 
the body,^^ 

This corporeal connexion is stated by Pkitarch, in the 
Qusest. Platon,^ still more plainly to have been the Pla- 

tonic doctrine— '^y;^«v ?r^«j-,/2yTS^£tv tcw o-co/uictTog^ etiTi'Jiv' n rue skuvou 

ctxKct '^u^^v /uiv iv ira)/!AdLTt, vow tfg iv Ti) -^ux^* ^' JThe soul is older 
than the body, and the cause and origin of its existence: 
not that the soul exists without the body, or the under- 
standing without the soul; but that the soul is in the 
hody, and the understanding in the soul,^^ 

According to these representations and quotations taken 
together, Plato held the soul to be an immaterial substance, 
separable from any given body, but incapable of existing 
without somebody or other, and the mind or understand- 
ing to be a part of the soul. The residue of the soul was, 
as we shall afterwards see, its sensitive or mortal portion. 

The idea of motion seems to have been intimately con- 
nected in their views with mind or spirit, and in so far 
their doctrines approach those, if we can call them doc- 
trines, of the modern atheists (See Note IV.) — ro lavro mnv 

^Says Plato j, (pug xoyov ix^tv nrm cturw cv^ictv wtts^ tqvvojucl o Si TrctVTis 

•^vxav TTpo^ciyof^iufAiv ; <py} fAiyr—'You say that the substance (or 
being) to which we all give the name of soul, has for its 
definition ''that which moves itself''? I certainly do 
say so, — JDe Legg, x. 

But the same philosophers also held the soul to be an 
emanation from the Deity, and that each individual soul 
was a portion of the Divine Essence, or Spirit : conse- 
quently, they could not mean to assert that the divine 
essence was inseparable from matter of some kind, but 
only those portions of that essence which they represented 
to be severed, and as it were torn off from the divine 

mind—— ox/vst^«? TO) Biody a^n aurov fAO^ia. cv(rtA tixi a7ro(r7ra,<rjuctrct. — 

(Upict.) 

Plutarch, in the work already cited, says — » h r^v^n cuk 

i^yov ferr/ /uovov akka km /uspog' cvS' Ctt civtou etxh' s^r* aurov, koj ^ etvrcv, 

>e>ov6v— " The soul is not only his work, but a part of 

15 



170 

himself ; it was not created by him^ but from him and 
out of him, ^^ • 



Note VII. 

Of the ancient Doctrines respecting the Deity and 
Matter. 

The notions of the Supreme Being entertained by the 
ancient philosophers were more simple and consistent 
than their theory of the soul ; and but for the belief, which^ 
they never shook off, in the eternity of matter, would very 
nearly have coincided with our own. They give him 
the very same names, and clothe him apparently in the 
like attributes. He is not only ctBAvctro?, ajpBufnog, nvooKiBpos^'^ 
immortal, incorruptible, indestructible^— -hut ctym^og^ ew^o^ 
ymQ, Avroipviic, ctvBvTroarrctro; — Uncreated, sclf-madc, self -origin-' 

(iting, Setj -existing, Zaov 7ra.a-(tv sp^ov /ttatjfcatpwT^Tfit ^st' eKpQdpa'tACf 

says Epicurus — " ^ Being having all happiness, with 
an incorruptible nature, ^^ Again, he is 7rciV'rcjcf>ciTu^,7ret'yKpdLrng 
'-^omnipotent, all-poiverful ; ^wct^dLt yctp ATretvrA, says Ho- 
mer ( Odyss, I ) — " He has power over all things,''^ The 
creative power is also in words at least ascribed to him — 
Koa-fAOTTomn?, ^njuiov^yoc — the maker of the world, the great ar- 
tificer^ Aristotle, too, in a very remarkabte passage of 
the Metaphysics, says that God seems to be the cause of 
all things, and, as it were, a beginning, or principle — » 
Qioc ifoKu TO ctirtov Traa-tv mAi mtt Ap^yi t/c ; and, indeed, by implica^ 
tion, this is ascribed in the terms uncreated, self-created, 
and self-existing ; for in soundness of reason the being 
who had no creator, and much more the being who cre- 
ated himself (if we can conceive such an idea), must have 
created all things else. Nevertheless, such was certainly 
not so plain an inference of reasoning with the ancients ; 
for whether it be that by ttvrotpvm and avToyim, they only 
meant to convey the idea of ctymTog — of a being uncreated 
and existing from all eternity— or that they took some 
nice distinction, to us incomprehensible, between self- 
creation and the creation of other beings or things — cer- 
tain it is, that the same philosophers who so described 
the Deity clung to the notion of matter being also eternal, 
and co-existent with the supreme power, and that by ere- 



171 

ator and artificer they rather seem to have meant the ar- 
ranger of atoms — the power giving form to chaotic matter, 
than the power calling things into existence. They ap- 
pear to have been all pressed by the difficulty (and who 
shall deny it ?) of conceiving the act of creation — the act 
of calling existences out of nothing. Accordingly, the 
maxim which generally prevailed among most of the 
Greek sects, and which led to very serious and even 
practical consequences in their systems, was cvh^ &c ^rou fxn 
6VT0? (or at ovSm^) yivio-Bau'—^that nothing is vnade of what has 
no existence, or of nothing, Aristotle represents this as 
the common opinion of all natural philosophers before 
him — KoivMv So^iiv n:m (pvo-iam. He says, in another passage 

yJOe Ccelo, iii. 1.) — ol /u^v etvrm (jrpo^i^ov g>tKocro(p})crcivrig) olvukov oxcei 
ymiTiv lau <pSip!:tV ovSiv ya^ ov<ri yiyvio-Qcti ^cl<tiv ovts (pBitfua-But toov cvTav— 

" Some of those (older philosophers) took away (or abo- 
lished) all generation and destruction, for they hold that 
none of the things which exist are either created or de- 
stroyed.^^ Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that the 
Platonic doctrine was of the same kind, and that Aristo- 
tle, in truth, ascribed only a qualified creative power to 
the Deity. Plutarch's statement of the Platonic doctrine 

is precise to this point— -yggp^r/ov ow UKeiTcovt 7ntQofA,ivovQ tov /usv 
KOo-juLov VTTQ Biou y^ovivcti Kiynv Ktu ctSitv /uiv yoip KOXKiTog Tav yiyovolm, 
Hi dptg-og rm aitiodv* tw tfs ovirtav tcAt vKnv i^ ng yryoviv, ov yivo/uevm, eix\et 
VTroKU /uiviiv etit ra hfxiovgyo), m SutSeo-tv km tcl^iv avluc jcm tt^oc avlov €|«- 
fAQtoDO-tv, 0)5 Svva^oy m Trct^Aa-^av* ov yap at rov fAH ovlog yiveo-ic, etw- 
tK Toy fAii KUKac, /un^' iKAvag i^P^loc, a? otjcictg, »*/ tjuctliou, ncit etvSptotvlos 

— " Better then be convinced by Plato, and say and 
sing that the world was made by God ; for the world 
is the most excellent of all created things, and he 
the best of all causes. But the substance or matter 
(literally timber) of which he made it, was not ere- 
ated, but always lay ready for the artificer, to be ar- 
ranged and ordered by him; for the creation was not 
out of nothing, but out of what had been without form 
and unfit, as a house, or a garment, or a statue are 
made,^^ And thus it seems that when Maker or Creator 
is used by the Academics, we are rather to regard them 
as meaning Maker in the sense in which an artificer is 
said to make or fabricate the object of his art. ETroma-iv 
(says Aristotle) ov rovh rm koo-juc^v ^ aTraa-Ac n-n; vkdc^^He made 
the world of all kinds of matter, ^De An. Mund. In- 
deed I can in no other way tinderstand that very obscure, 



172 

and but for some such gloss, contradictory passage of 
Aristotle, in the first book of the Physics, where he is 
giving his own doctrine in opposition to the tenets of the 
elder philosophers on this point — h^s/c cTg acu etvloi pA/uiv yiyvsa- 

BdLi JU6V cvt^iv dTTKaic in Tou fjLii ovlog, co^oig /uivlot ytyvio-Qat i}c /utn ovlos 
Okh Kci^ci a-u/ul^il^mc/c' at yctg t«? o-TS^na-icog o gr/ nuB^ avlo fM ovy 
QVH. ivvTrctg^civlog yiyvijcu ti, Bav/ua^ijat cfs Tovh x.a.1 cJwalov cvjoo tfoicu 

yiyvio-Qat Tt i}c Tov /uif ovIoq — " We ourselves however say 
that nothing is absolutely (or merely) produced from 
what has no existence, yet that something is pro- 
duced from- that which has no existence as far as regards 
accidents (or accessory qualities) ; for something is pro- 
duced from privation, ivhich has no existence in itself y 
and not from anything inherent. But this is wonderful^ 
and seems impossible, that something should be produced 
out of that which has no existence.^^ — {Phys, i. 8.) In- 
deed he had said in the same treatise, just before, that all 
confessed it impossible and inconceivable that any being 
could either be created out of nothing, or be utterly de- 
stroyed — 5;t Tcv fjm ovlos yiviaQdi <toJb cu iPpXkiia-Bui avuvus'ov- nut app»x.7ov* 

(76. i. 5.) 

Upon the uncreated nature of things — for the doctrine 
extended to mind as well as to matter^ — the ancient phi- 
losophers founded another tenet of great importance* 
Matter and soul were reckoned not only uncreated, but 
indestructible ; their existence was eternal in every sense 
of the word, without end as without beginning : juixfsv nc 

Tou juti ovlog yivio-Boj, fjtyiSs ucto /uy) ov ^Qs/pso-Qu/^" JSothmg CaU 06 

produced out of that which has no existence, nor can any 
thing be reduced to nonentity.''^ Such is Diogenes Laer- 
tius's account of Democritus's doctrine, or the Atomic 
principle, 

^^ Principium hinc cujus nobis exordia sumet, 
Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus unquam" — 

" Hue accedit uti quid que in sua corpora rursum 
Dissolvat natura, neque ad nihilum intereunt res'*— 

" Haud igitur redit ad nihilum res ulla, sed omnes 
Discidio redeunt in corpora materiai" — 

are the expressions of Lucretius, in giving an account of 
the Epicurean Philosophy (i. 151, 217, 249), or, as Per- 
sius more shortly expresses it, 

<< De nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti."— ^Sa^. iii. 84. 



173 

And it must be admitted that they reasoned with great 
consistency in this respect ; for if the difficulty of com- 
prehending the act of creation out of nothing was a suffi- 
cient ground for holding all things to be eternal a parte 
ante — the equal difficulty of comprehending the act of 
annihilation was as good a ground for believing in their 
eternity a parte post — there being manifestly just as much 
difficulty, and of the same kind, in comprehending how a 
being can cease to exist, as how it can come into exist- 
ence. 

From this doctrine mainly it. is that the Greek philo- 
sophers derive the immortality of the soul, as far as the 
metaphysical and more subtle arguments for their belief 
go ; and accordingly its pre-existence is a part of their 
faith as much as its future life, the eternity ah ante being 
as much considered as the eternity post. Thus Plato 
says that '' our soul was somewhere before it existed in 
the human form, as also it seems to be immortal after- 
wards — «v TTQV n.ueev n '^vx,ii yrgiv iv Tacfs i-co AvB^ooTttvce uSit yi- 
fio-Qati, aa-Ti xetiTctvry} ctBu.va.Tov ti eoiKiv a 4^/t.^ s/va/.— (-t A^flt. ) 

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that their doctrine of 
future existence is most unsatisfactory as far as it is thus 
derived, that is, their psychological argument : and for two 
reasons— ^r5^, because it is coupled with the tenet of pre- 
existence, and having no kind of evidence of that from rea- 
soning, we not only are prone to reject it, but are driven to 
suppose that our future existence will in like manner be se- 
vered by want of recollection from all consideration of per- 
sonal identity ; secondly, because, according to the doctrine 
of the soul being an emanation from the Deity, its future 
state implies a return to the divine essence, and a confu- 
sion with or absorption in that supreme intelligence, and 
consequently an extinction of individual existence : a 
doctrine which was accordingly held by some of the 
metaphysical philosophers who maintained a Future 
State. 

In one important particular there was an entire differ- 
ence of opinion among the ancient philosophers — in truth, 
so important a difference, that those were held not to be 
theists, but atheists, who maintained one side of the argu- 
ment— 1 mean as to Providence. The Atomists and Epi- 
cureans held that there were Gods, and upon the subject 

15* 



114: 

of creative power they did not materially differ from those 
generally called theists ; but they denied that these Gods 
ever interfered in the affairs of the universe. The lan- 
guage of Plato and the other theists upon this subject is 
very strong. They regard such a doctrine as one of the 
t?iree kinds of blasphemy or sacrilege ; and in the Repub- 
lic of that philosopher, all the three crimes are made 
equally punishable with death. The first species is deny- 
ing the existence of a Deity, or of Gods: to Si Sivr^ov, ov 
rdL.g (Qiouc) ov <ppQvri^uv avBpoiTrov. " The secoucl, admitting 
their existence, but denying that they care for man.^^ 
The third kind of blasphemy was that of men attempting 
to propitiate the Gods towards criminal conduct, as <pQovo: 
and ctJ'tKyfjuiaTciy slaughters mid outrages upon justice, ''by 
prayers, thanksgivings, a7id sacrifices — thus making 
those pure beings the accomplices of their crimes, by 
sharing with them a small portion of the spoil, as th& 
wolves do with the dogs.^^ — De Legg. x.*" 



Note VIII. 
Of the ancient Doctrine of the Iminortality of the SouL 

That the ancient philosophers for the most part be- 
lieved in the Future Existence of the Soul after death is 
undeniable. It is equally certain that their opinions upon 
this important subject varied exceedingly, and that the 
kind of immortality admitted by one class can hardly be 
allowed to deserve the name. Thus they who considered 

* Who can read these, and such passages as these, without wish- 
ing that some who call themselves Christians, some Christian Prin- 
cipaUties and Powers, had taken a lesson from the heathen sage, and 
(if their nature forbade them to abstain from massacres and injus- 
tice) at least had not committed the scandalous impiety, as he calls 
it, of singing in places of Christian worship, and- for the accom- 
plishment of their enormous crimes, Te Deums, which in Plato's 
Republic would have been punished as blasphemy 1 Who, indeed, 
can refrain from lamenting another pernicious kind of sacrilege (an 
anthropomorphism) yet more frequent — that of making Christian 
temples resound with prayers for victory over our enemies, and 
thanksgiving for their defeat '? Assuredly such a ritual as this is not 
taken from the New Testament. 



175 

it as a portion of the Divine essence severed for a time, 
in order to be united with a perishable body, believed in 
a future existence without memory or consciousness of 
personal identity, and merely as a reuniting of it with 
the Divine mind. Such, however, was not the belief of 
the more pure and enlightened theists, and to their opi- 
nion, as approaching nearest our own, it is proposed to 
confine the present notice. 

In one respect, even the most philosophical of those 
theories differed widely from the Christian faith, and 
indeed departed almost as widely from the intimations of 
sound reason. They all believed in the soul's pre-exist^ 
ence. This is expressly given as proved by facts, and as 
one argument for immortality or future existence, by Plato 
in the most elaborate treatise which remains upon the 
subject, the Phoedo. He considers that all learning is 
only recollection, tuv /utctQua-tv etvet/uv»<riv uvai, and seems to 
think it inconceivable that any idea could ever come into 
the mind, of which the rudiments had not formerly been 
implanted there. In the Timxus and other writings the 
same doctrine is further expounded. Hv ttov vifxm^ n 4^A:^ 

TTftv 6V T« cTg TCi) eLvB^ct)7nva> uSu yiVio-Bctt.) ODcrri jcai TaVT3i ctBctvctrov 

T/ iotKiv » -^vx^ iivdi. " Our soul existed somewhere before it 
was produced in the humanform (or body), so it seems to be 
immortal also. "^^ The arguments indeed, generally speak- 
ing, on which both Plato and other philosophers ground 
their positions, derive their chief interest from the im- 
portance of the subject, and from the exquisite language 
in which they are clothed. As reasonings they are of 
little force or value. Thus it is elaborately shown, or 
rather asserted in the Phasdo, that contraries always*come 
from contraries, as life from death, and death from life, in 
the works of Nature. Another argument is that the 
nature or essence of the soul is immortality, and hence it 
is easily inferred that it exists after death, a kind of rea- 
soning hardly deserving the name — 'OTtoTi h <rov etBctvarov kai 

diSiei<pBofiov i<rrtv, aXKori -^v^n », u etBAvaroc ruyx^vu ovcrct^KdLi avot' 

KiBpog Av m — ''Since that which is immortal is also indes- 
tructible, lohat else can we conclude but that the soulbeing 
(or happening to be) immortal, must also be imperishable.''^ 
(Phsed.) A more cogent topic is that of its simplicity, 
from whence the inference is drawn that it must be in- 



176 

destructible, because what we mean by the destruction of 
matter is its resolution into the elements that compose it. 
In one passage, Plato comes very near the argument re- 
lied on in the text respecting the changes which the body 
undergoes ; but it appears from the rest of the passage 
that he had another topic or illustration in view — akka 

yetp AV <fa,iiiv hcAo-THV todv '^v^eev ttoXKa <7oa(A(K^eL KAraTptfiuVi etKKoog^ 
Tg icctv TTiKKA fiT« yS/w. Ei yctp pio-i <T0 a-oDjuet kai ATroWvotro irt ^av' 
*rog rev AvBpaTrov axk'' « 4^/t^ ^^' '^^ KATATpi/^o/uivoY Avv<^Atvot ctv*- 

yXAlOV /UiVT^ AV itH, OTTOTi CtTTOKKVOlTO ^ 4^/t^> '^^^ ^^ KiVTAtO^] li<^A7fXA 
TV^UV AUrHV i^OVa-AV^ Si TOVTQV fJLO\OV TTpOTipAV ATTOXKVff-QAt-^ 

*' But I should rather say that each of our souls wears 
out many bodies^ though these should live many years $ 
for if the body runs out and is destroyed^ the man still 
livings but the soul always repairs that which is worn 
out, it ivould follow of necessity that the soul when it 
perished would happen to have its last covering, and to 
perish only just before that covering, "^^ — Phsed, A sin- 
gular instance of the incapacity of the ancients to observe 
facts, or at least the habitual carelessness with which they 
admitted relations of them, is afforded in another of these 
arguments. Socrates is made to refer, in the Phdedo, to 
the appearance of ghosts near places of burial as a well- 
known and admitted fact, and as proving that a portion of 
the soul for a while survived the body, but partook of its 
nature and likeness, and was not altogether immortal. 
This distinction between the mortal or sensitive and the 
immortal or intellectual part of the soul pervades the Pla- 
tonic theism. We have observed^ already in the statement 
of Plutarch, that the Platonists held the vovg or intellect to 
be contained in the -^vx^^ oi* ^oul, and the same doctrine 
occurs in other passages. Aristotle regards the soul in 
like manner as composed of two parts — the active, or yo:/?, 
and the passive ; the former he represents as alone im- 
mortal and eternal ; the latter as destructible, rr^^uro ^j^o^oy 

aBAVaJov Kat aiStov^ o Si TTABhliicyfc <^BAp^oQ.''—'JNlC, Jojth, 

It must, however, be admitted, that the belief of the 
ancients was more firm and more sound than their reason- 
ings were cogent. The whole tenor of the doctrine in 
the Phsedo refers to a renewal or continuation of the soul 
as a separate and individual existence, after the dissolu- 
tion of the body, and with a complete consciousness of 
personal identity— -in short, to a continuance of the same 



177 

rational being's existence after death. The liberation 
from the body is treated as the beginning of a new and 
more perfect life — tc76 yoLf^ etuh kaB' auhv » -^vx^ 6^7^/ x^P^^ 

Tov o-ccjuaIoc' 7rpolif)OV <r* ou (^rikivlii<Tct(ri^, Xenophon thuS 

makes Cyrus deliver himself to his children on his death- 
bed— Oy7oi iyooyi, a TrcttSng, ouSi ^rovlo Ttaifrolt zTTucrBctv a>g ii 4^^^» 
ia>S /UBV CIV iv Bvulo a-a/uctli », f«v, oldv cTg Tovjau cL7rcjL\\dLy\\^ nBvmciV 
— ovSi yi oTTog cc<pf)Oi)V ttrlAi « 4'^X^> iTTiiScLV lov eKppovog a-Q/uctjog ^tX^ 
yivuldii^ ovSi Tovlo TTiTrua-fAan' ctKh!' ojctv etKpctJog koli KciBctpos o vous 

€;fc/>/0«, Toli KAi <ppQvtfAaflitJov iticos divlov g/vA/.* Cicero has trans- 
lated the whole passage upon this subject beautifully, 
though somewhat paraphrastically ; but this portion he 
has given more literally — " Mihi quidem nunquam per- 
suaderi potuit, animos dum in corporibus essent mortali- 
bus, vivere ; quum exissent ex iis, emori : nee vero turn 
animum esse insipientem, quum ex insipienti corpora 
erasisset ; sed quum omni admixtione corporis liberatus 
purus et integer esse ccepisset, eum esse sapientem.f 

None of the ancients, indeed, has expressed himself 
more clearly or more beautifully upon the subject than 
this great philosopher and rhetorician. His reasoning, 
too, respecting it greatly exceeds in soundness and in sa- 
gacity that of the Grecian sages. Witness the admirable 
argument in the Tusculan Questions. They who deny 
the doctrine, says he, can only allege as the ground of 
their disbelief the difficulty of comprehending the state of 
the soul severed from the body, as if they could compre- 
hend its state in the body. '' Quasi vero intelligant, qualis 
sit in ipso corpore, quae conformatio, quae magnitudo, qui 
locus."—" Haec reputent isti (he adds) qui negant ani- 
mum sine corpore se intelligere posse ; videbunt quem in 
ipso corpore intelligant. Mihi quidem naturam animi in- 
tuenti, multo difficilior occurrit cogitatio, multoque obscu- 
rior, qualis animus in corpore sit, tanquam alienae domi, 
quam qualis, cum exierit, et in liberum coelum quasi do- 
mum suum venerit.":): That he derived the most refined 
gratification from such contemplations, many passages of 
his writings attest. None more than those towards the 

* Cyrop. ii. 

■j- De Senect. 80. — Here the words <^ omni admixtione," &c. are 
added. 

:{: Tusc. Quaest. i. 22. 



178 

close of the Cato Major, which must often have cheered 
the honest labourers for their country and their kind in the 
midst of an ungrateful and unworthy generation. '' An 
censes (ut de me ipso aliquid more senem glorier) me 
tantos labores diurnos nocturnosque, domi militiseque sus- 
cepturum fuisse, si iisdem finibus gloriam meam, quibus 
vitam essem terminaturus ? Nonne melius multo fuisset 
otiosam aetatem et quietam sine ullo labore aut contentione 
traducere?" '' Think you — to speak somewhat of myself 
after the manner of old men— think you that I should ever 
have undergone such toils, by day and by night, at home 
and abroad, had I believed that the term of my life was to 
be the period of my renown ? How much better would 
it have been to while away a lir^tless being and a tranquil, 
void of all strife, and free from any labour?"* And again, 
that famous passage : " O praeclarum diem quum adillud 
divinum animorum concilium caetumque proficiscar ; quum- 
que ex hac turba et colluvione discedam !" " Delightful 
hour ! when I shall journey towards that divine assem- 
blage of spirits, and depart from this crowd of polluted 
things !"t 

The Platonic ideas of a future state, as well as those 
adopted by the Roman sage, distinctly referred to an ac- 
count rendered, and rewards or punishments awarded for 
the things done in the body— ';^g« ttclvIa Troiuv, says Plato, 

at)C-7g etpiji}? x.ctt (^povho-iceg iv too ^ia> fxilcta-yjiv' icctKov yap taQkov iccti 

« iKms fAiyctKii — "We ought to act in all things so as to 
pursue virtue and wisdom in this life, for the labour is 
excellent and the hope great.^^ — (Be Legg. x.) Tov cTs 

ov7at HfJLOov iKAcrrov ovrac ctBcLyctrov uvctt^ '^v^ttv i'H'ovof/.a.^ojusvov, 7ra.pit 
QiotC ctWQtg aTTtivat, S(»<rovla T^oyoVy JcaBeiTrift o vo/txos o TTQlpcos Kiyti, 
*ra) fJLiv QtyQQoo Bapp^Kiov, too Si KOiKce /maXa <pofiipoy '' In trUth 

each of us — that is to say, each soul — is immortal, and 
departs to other Gods (or Gods in another world) to ren- 
der an account as the laws of the state declare. This to 
the good is matter of confidence, but to the wicked of 
terror.^^ — [Be Legg. xii.) So in the beginning of the 
JEpinomis he says that a glorious prospect (Kaxn (kttic) 
is held out to us of attaining, when we die, the happiness 
not to be enjoyed on earth, and to gain which after death, 
we had exerted all our efforts. In the Fhaedo, where he 

* DeSenect. 82. f Ibid. 85. 



179 

is giving a somewhat fanciiul picture of" the next world, 
he tells us that souls which have committed lesser crimes 

come us TilV ?.ltAV'lV Kelt iKit ClKCViTt <ti Hdit kdQxtpo/UiVOt fTCOV St 
ttSliLlifA±'TU)V SiJ'oV'Tig J'lH.U.C dLTT'.XUOVTcJLl U Tig Tl i)SlK^<Tl " tllSy 

remain in that space, and being cleansed {or purged) 
of their offences, are released^ (from whence the idea 
and the name of purgatory has been taken). But such 
as have been incurably wicked, murderers and others, 
are driven, he says, into Tartarus, o0«r ovTroli iKJ^etivovctv, 
" whence they never more escaped ^ It is remarkable, 
that in the same work, Plato, if some words have not been 
interpolated in the text, looks forward to some direct divine 
"Communications of light upon this subject; but recom- 
mends abiding by the light of reason till that shall be 
granted. Let us, he says, choose the best human reason, 
and, sitting on it like a raft, pass through the dangers of 
life, unless (or until) u ^ahIis Swsttlo Aff-<petKi(rlipov kai akivJv* 

vAi^^^' unless some one can pass us over more easily 
and safely upon some stronger vehicle or divine word.^^f 
The passage in the Somnium Scipionis, where celes- 
tial enjoyments are held out as the rewards of public vir- 
tue, is well known. The precision indeed of the language 
touching a future state, which marks this treatise, is singu- 
lar, approaching to that of the New Testament — " beati 
aevo sempiterno fruuntur" — " ea vita via est in coelum et 
in hunc coetum eorum qui jam vixerunt et corpore laxati 
ilium incolunt locum" — "immo veroii vivunt, qui ex cor- 
porum vinculis, tanquam e carcere, evolaverunt; vestra 
Vero, qu8e dicitur vita, mors est" — *' sic habeto, non esse 
te mortalem, sed corpus hoc ; nee enim tu is es, quern 
forma ista declarat, sed mens cujusque, is est quisque" — 
" animus in domum suam pervolabit, idque ocius faciet, 
si jam tum, quum erit inclusus in corpore, eminebit foras, 
et ea qua3 extra erunt contemplans, quam maxime se a 
corpore abstrahet." These things have given rise to doubts 
of the authenticity of the treatise — doubts easily removed 
by looking to the many absurdities respecting the celestial 
bodies and the other accompaniments of heaven with 
which the work abounds ; to the Platonic doctrine re- 

* Phad. t Ibid. 



180 

spectiiig motion as the essence of mind, which it adopts ; 
and also to the doctrine distinctly stated of the pre-exi«tent 
state. 



Note IX. 



Of Bishop WarhuTton^s Theory concerning the ancient 
Doctrine of a Future State. 

To any one \vho had read the extracts in the last Note, 
but still more to one who was familiar with the ancient 
writers from whose Avorks they are taken, it might ap- 
pear quite iinpossible that a question should ever be rais- 
ed upon the general belief of antiquity in a Future State, 
and the belief of some of the most eminent of the phi- 
losophers, at least, in* a state of rewards and punish- 
ments. Nevertheless, as there is nothing so plain to 
which the influence of a preconceived opinion and the 
desire of furthering a favourite hypothesis will not blind 
men, and as their blindness in such cases bears even a 
proportion to their learning and ingenuity, it has thus fared 
with the point in question, and Bishop Warburton has 
denied that any of the ancients except Socrates really be- 
lieved in a future state of the soul individually, and sub- 
ject to reward or punishment. He took up this argu- 
ment because it seemed to strengthen his extraordinary 
reasoning upon the Legation of Moses. It is therefore 
necessary first to state how his doctrine bears upon that 
reasoning. 

His reasoning is this. The inculcating of a future state 
of retribution is necessary to the well being of society* 
All men, and especially all the wisest nations of antiqui^ 
ty, have agreed in holding such a doctrine necessary to 
be inculcated. But there is nothing of the kind to be 
found in the Mosaic dispensation. And here he pauses 
to observe that these propositions seem too clear to re- 
quire any proof. Nevertheless his whole work is con- 
sumed in proving them ; and the conclusion from the 
whole, that therefore the Mosaic law is of Divine ori- 
ginal, is left for a further work, which never appeared ; 
and yet this is the very position which all, or almost all 



181 

who may read the book, and even yield their assent to 
it, are the most inclined to reject. Indeed it may well 
be doubted if this work, learned and acute as it is, and 
showing the author to be both well read and well fitted 
for controversy, ever satisfied any one except perhaps 
Bishop Hurd, or ever can demonstrate any thing so well, 
as it proves the preposterous and perverted ingenuity of 
an able and industrious man. 

That such was very far from being the author's opin- 
ion we have ample proof. He terms his work "A De- 
monstration." He describes his reasoning " as very little 
short of mathematical certainty," and " to which nothing 
but a mere physical possibility of the contrary can be op- 
posed ;" and he declares his only difficulty to be in " tell- 
ing whether the pleasure of the discovery or the wonder 
that it is now to make be the greater." Accordingly in 
the correspondence between him and his friend Bishop 
Hurd, the complete success of the '^ Demonstration" is 
always assumed, and the glory of it is made the topic of 
endless and even mutual gratulation, not without pity and 
even vituperation of all who can remain dissatisfied, and 
who are habitually and complacently classed by name 
with the subjects of Pope's well-known satire. 

The two things which the author always overlooked 
were the possibility of a human lawgiver making an im- 
perfect system, and of sceptics holding the want of the 
sanction in question to be no argument for the divine origin 
of the Mosaic law, but rather a proof of its flowing from 
a human and fallible source. As these " mere possibili- 
ties" are wholly independent of the admission that every 
word in the book is correct, and all the positions are de- 
monstrated, and as nothing whatever is said to exclude 
such suppositions, it is manifest that a more useless and 
absurd argument never was maintained upon any grave 
and important subject. The merit of the book lies in its 
learning and its collateral argument ; indeed nearly the 
whole is collateral, and unconnected with the purpose of 
the reasoning. But much even of that collateral matter is 
fanciful and unsound. The fancy that the descent of 
iEneas to hell in the sixth book of the iEneid is a veil- 
ed account of the Eleusinian Mysteries, has probably 
made a few proselytes as the main body of the '' Demon- 

16 



182 

stration ;" and if any one has lent his ear to the theory 
that the ancients had no belief in a future state of retri- 
bution, it can only be from being led away by confident 
assertion from the examination of the facts. 

This position of Bishop Warburton is manifestly whol- 
ly unnecessary to the proof of his general theory. But 
he thought it would show more strongly the opinion en- 
tertained of the uses to be derived from inculcating the 
doctrine of a Future State, if he could prove that they 
who held it in public and with political views, did not 
themselves believe it. 

The way in which he tries to prove this is by observ- 
ing that there prevailed among the old philosophers as 
well as lawgivers a principle of propagating what they 
knew to be false opinions for the public benefit, and of 
thus holding one kind of doctrine in secret, the esoteric^ 
and another, the exoteric^ in public* Of this fact, there 
is no doubt, bat its origin is hardly to be thus traced to 
design always prevailing. The most ancient notions of 
religion were the birth of fear and ignorance in the earli- 
est ages, and the fancy of the poets mingled with these, 
multiplying and improving and polishing the rude ima- 
ginations of popular terror and simplicity. The rulers of 
the community, aiding themselves by the sanctions which 
they drew from thence, favoured the continuance and pro- 
pagation of the delusions ; and philosophers who after- 
wards rose among the people were neither disposed them- 
selves nor permitted by the magistrate openly to expose 
the errors of the popular faith. Hence they taught one 
doctrine in private, while in public they conformed to 
the prevailing creed, and the observances which it en- 
joined. 

But whatever be the origin of the double doctrine, 
Bishop Warburton cannot expect that its mere existence 
and the use made of it by ancient writers and teachers 
will prove his position, unless he can show that the fu- 
ture state of retribution is only mentioned by them upon 
occasions of an exoterical kind, and never when esote- 
ricdlly occupied. Now this he most signally fails to do ; 
indeed he can hardly be said fairly to make the attempt, 
for his rule is to make the tenor of the doctrine the cri- 
terion of esoteric or exoteric^ instead of showing the oc- 



183 

casion to be one or the other from extrinsic circumstan- 
ces, which is manifestly begging the question most un- 
scrupulously. It seems hardly credible that so acute and 
practised a controversialist should so conduct an argu- 
ment, but it is quite true. As often as any thing occurs 
in favour of a Future State, he says it was said exoteric- 
ally ; and whenever he can find any thing on the oppo- 
site side, or leaning towards it, (which is really hardly at 
all in the Platonic or Ciceronian writings,) he sets this 
down for the esoteric sentiments of the writer. But sure- 
ly if there be any meaning at all in the double doctrine, 
whatever may have been its origin, the occasion is every 
thing, and there can be no difficulty in telling whether 
any given opinion was maintained exoterically or not, by 
the circumstances in which, and the purposes for which, 
it was propounded. 

The argument on which he dwells most is drawn from 
the allusion made by Caesar in the discussion upon the pun- 
ishment of the conspirators as related by Sallust, *' Ultra 
(mortem) neque curae neque gaudio locum esse ;" and 
from the way in which Cato and Cicero evade, he says, 
rather than answer him, appealing to the traditions of an- 
tiquity and the authority of their ancestors instead of ar- 
guing the point. i^Div. Leg, III. 2. 5.) Can any thing 
be more inconclusive than this ? Granting that Sallust, in 
making speeches for Caesar and Cato (whom by the way 
he makes speak in the self-same style, that is, in his own 
Sallustian style), adhered to the sentiments each deliver- 
ed ; and further, that Caesar uses this strange topic not 
as a mere rhetorical figure, but as a serious reason against 
capital punishment, and as showing that there is mercy 
and not severity in such inflictions (a very strong suppo- 
sition to make respecting so practised and so practical a 
reasoner as Caius Caesar); surely so bold a position as 
practical atheism brought forward in the Roman senate 
was far more likely to be met, whether by the decorum 
of Cato or the skill of Cicero, with a general appeal to 
the prevalence of the contrary belief, and its resting on 
ancient tradition, than with a metaphysical or theolo- 
gical discourse singularly out of season in such a debate. 
To make the case our own : let us suppose some member 
of Parliament, or of the Chamber of Deputies, so ill 



184 

judged as to denounce in short but plain terms the reli* 
gion of the country, would any person advert further to 
so extravagant a speech than to blame it, and in general 
expressions signify the indignation it had excited ? Would 
not an answer out of Lardner, or Paley, or Pascal be 
deemed almost as ill timed as the attack ? To be sure 
neither Cato nor Cicero are represented as testifying any 
great disgust at the language of Caesar, but this, as well in- 
deed as the topic being introduced at all by the latter, 
only shows that the doctrine of a Future State was not 
one of the tenets much diffused among the people, or held 
peculiarly sacred by them. Had the orator vindicated 
Catiline by showing how much less flagitious his bad life 
was than that of some of the gods to whom altars* were 
erected and woiship rendered, a very different burst of 
invective would have been called down upon the blasphe- 
mous offender. 

In truth, the passage thus relied upon only shows, like 
all the rest of the facts, that the doctrine of retribution 
was rather more esoteric than exoteric among the an- 
cients. The elaborate dissertation of Bishop Warbur- 
ton's upon the Mysteries, proves this effectually, and 
clearly refutes his whole argument. For to prove that 
the doctrine of future retribution was used at all as an 
engine of state, he is forced to allege that it was the se- 
cret disclosed to the initiated in the Sacred Mysteries ; 
which, according to Cicero, were not to be viewed by 
the imprudent eye. (Ne imprudentiam quidem oculorum 
adjici fas est, De Legg. IL 14.) Surely this would ra- 
ther indicate that such doctrines were not inculcated in- 
discriminately, and that at all events, when a philosopher 
gives them a place in his works, it cannot be in pursu- 
ance of a plan for deceiving the multitude into a belief 
different from his own. It is indeed plain enough that 
the bulk of the people were restrained, if by any sanc- 
tions higher than those of the penal laws, rather by the 
belief of constant interposition from the gods. An ex- 
pectation of help from their favour or of punishment from 
their anger in this life and without any delays formed the 
creed of the Greeks and Romans ; and nothing else is to 
be found in either the preamble to Zaleucus the Locrian*s 
laws quoted by Bishop Warburton, or in the passages of 



185 

Cicero's treatise, to which he also refers. Div* Leg,) 
11. 3.) 

Among the many notable inadvertencies of his argu- 
ment, concealed from himself by an exuberant learning 
and a dogmatism hardly to be paralleled, is the neglect- 
ing to observe how difficultly the appearance of the doc- 
trine in the places where we find it is reconciled with his 
notion of its having formed the subject of the Mysteries. 
What part in those Mysteries did Cicero's and Plato's 
and Seneca's and Xenophon's writings bear ? There we 
have the doctrine plainly stated ; possibly to the world at 
large — possibly, far more probably, to the learned reader 
only — but assuredly not by the Hierophant or the Mysta- 
gogue, to the initiated. This is wholly inconsistent with 
the notion of its being reserved for these alone. It is 
equally inconsistent with the theory that it was promul- 
gated for the purposes of deception ; for such purposes 
would have been far better served by decidedly making it 
a part neither of the instruction given to the select and 
initiated few, nor of the doctrine confined to the students 
of philosophy, but of the common, vulgar, popular be- 
lief and ritual which it is admitted not to have been. 
The truth undeniably is, that as, on the one hand, it was 
not universally preached and inculcated, so neither was 
it any mystery forbidden to be divulged — that it was no 
part of the vulgar creed, nor yet so repugnant to the reli- 
gion of the country as to be concealed from prudential 
considerations, like the unity of the Deity, the fabulous- 
ness of the ordinary polytheistic superstitions, as to the 
gods and goddesses, the demigods, and the Furies. These 
opinions were indeed esoteric^ and only promulgated 
among the learned. A few allusions, and but a few, are 
found to them in any of the classical authors whose writ- 
ings were intended for general perusal, and chiefly to the 
parts which had in process of time become too gioss even 
for the vulgar, such as the Furies, Cerberus, &c., which 
Cicero describes as unfit for the belief of even an igno- 
rant or doting old woman (Quae anus tam excors, <&:c. De 
Nat. Deor., and Tusc. Quaest.), and which are treated as 
fables both by Demosthenes in that noble passage where 
he exclaims that the Furies, who are represented in the 
scene as driving men with burning torches («xctyf/y Seicrty 

16* 



186 

fi^^fivat/c), are our bad passions, and by Cicero in words 
(Hi faces, hae flammae, &;c.) almost translated from the 
Greek. 

After all, can any thing be more violent than the sup- 
position that those philosophers, for the purpose of de- 
ceiving the multitude, delivered opinions not held by 
themselves, and delivered them in profound philosophical 
treatises ? It is in the Phaedo and the Timaeus (hardly 
intelligible to the learned) , and the Tusculan Questions, 
and the Somnium Scipionis, in an age when there were 
hardly any readers beyond the disciples of the several sects, 
that those exoteric matters are supposed to be conveyed 
for accomplishing the purposes of popular delusion — not 
in poems and speeches, read in the Portico or pronounced 
in the Forum. If then the records of their opinions on 
the most recondite subjects were chosen for the deposi- 
tories of exoteric faith, where are we to look for their eso- 
teric doctrines ? Bishop Warburton must needs answer, 
in the very same records ; for to this he is driven, because 
he has none other ; and he cannot choose but admit that 
the whole argument is utterly defective, if it stops short 
at only showing those opinions to have been delivered, 
even if proved to be exoterical, unless he can also show 
opposite doctrines to have been esotericaliy entertained*— 
inasmuch as a person might grant the former to have been 
delivered for popular use (which, however. Bishop War- 
burton does not prove), and yet deny that they were as- 
sumed for the purpose of deception. Accordingly he is 
driven to find, if he can, proofs of those opposite doctrines 
in the self-same writings, where he says the exoteric ones 
are conveyed. However nothing surely can be more 
absurd than this ; for it is to maintain that Plato and Ci- 
cero pretended to believe a future state of retribution in 
order to deceive the multitude, by stating it in the same 
writings in which they betrayed their real sentiments to 
be the very reverse. And this absurdity is the same, and 
this argument is as cogent, if we take the double doctrine 
to apply, not — as we are, in favour of the Bishop's argu- 
ment, generally supposing — to a difference between what 
was taught in the face of the people and what was reser- 
ved for the scholars, but to a division of the scholars into 
two classes, one only of whom was supposed to see the 



187 

whole truth— for the same writings on this subject are 
said to contain both the statements of it. Nevertheless, 
let us shortly see how he finds any such contrary state- 
ments, or any means of explaining away the positive and 
precise dicta, and even reasonings, cited in the former 
note (Note VIIL). 

1. There can be no doubt that both the Greek and 
Roman philosophers disbelieved part of the popular doc- 
trine as to future retribution, those punishments, to wit, 
which are of a gross and corporeal nature ; and, accord- 
ingly, what Timaeus the Locrian and others have said of 
the rt/maiptsit ^tvcit proves nothing, for it applies to those 
only. Strabo plainly speaks of these only in the passage 
where he observes that women and the vulgar are not to 
be kept pious and virtuous by the lessons of philosophy, 
but by superstition, which cannot he maintained without 
mythology (fable-making) and prodigies {Sici Sii(TiScufAc>vm* 
rovloS' ovK ctv(u /uvBoTroicts km TipctjuctcY for he gives as examples 
of these, Jupiter's Thunder, the Snakes of the Furies, 
&c. 

2. Nothing can be more vague than the inference drawn 
from such passages as those in Cicero and Seneca, where 
a doubt is expressed on the subject of a Future State, 
and a wish of more cogent proofs seems betrayed— as 
where Cicero makes one of his piolocutors, in the Tus- 
culan Questions, say, that when he lays down the Phaedo, 
which had persuaded him, " Assensio omnis ilia elabi- 
tur" (i. 11.), and when Seneca speaks of the philosophers 
as " rem gratissimam promittentes magis quam proben- 
tes," and calls it " bellum somnium." Epist, 102, No 
one pretends that the ancients had a firm and abiding opi- 
nion, founded on very cogent reasons, respecting a Future 
State ; and with far sounder theologians than they were, 
the anxiety naturally incident to so momentous an inquiry 
may well excite occasional doubts, and even apprehen- 
sions. Who questions Dr. Johnson's general belief in 
Revelation, because in moments of depression, when de- 
siderating some stronger evidence, he was kindly told by 
a religious friend that he surely had enough, and answer- 
ed, '*6'ir, I would have more?^^ 

3. When Strabo speaks of the Brahmins having in- 
vented fables, like Plato, upon future judgment, it is plain 



188 

that he alludes to those speculations in the Phaedo, which 
are avowedly and purposely given as imaginary respect- 
ing the details of another world. To no other part of the 
Platonic doctrine can the Brahminical mythology be 
likened : nor would there be any accuracy of speech at 
all in comparing those fables to the more abstract doctrines 
of the immortality of the soul, as the words literally do— 

4. The quotation from Aristotle may refer to this world 
merely, but it is certaily made a good deal stronger in 
Bishop Warburton's translation — (po0^a}lcilov h Qxyalos' Tnga^ 

yUf, KU4 OuSiV iTl TOO TiQviCcll tf' OVK 2/, Ovli CfyctQcV, Cvli KAKOV ilVCU, '' Dcath 

(as our author renders it) is of all things the most ter- 
rible ; for it is the final period of existence, and beyond 
that, it appears there is neither good nor evil for the dead 
man to dread or hope." This is, at the best, a mere pa- 
raphrase. Aristotle says — Death is most terrible, for it 
is an end (of us), and there appears to be nothing fur- 
ther, good or bad, for the dead. Even were we to take 
this as an avowal of the Stagyrite's opinion in the sense 
given it by Bishop Warburton, it proves nothing as to 
Plato. 

4. Some of the Stoics seem certainly to have held that 
the dissolution of the body closed the scene, and that the 
body ceased to exist by the resolving of its mortal frame 
into the kindred elements. Nevertheless many of their 
observations may be conceived to regard the vulgar super- 
stitions, and many of their sayings to flow from the habit 
of grandiloquent contempt for all bodily suffering. How- 
ever, no one maintains that all the ancient sects of Theists, 
and each disciple of every sect, firmly believed in a future 
state ; and it must be remarked that the question raised by 
Bishop Warburton being as to the belief in a state of retri- 
bution, his citations from Seneca and Epictetus go to deny 
the future continuance of the soul altogether. Now he 
does not deny that at least some of the ancients did believe 
in this. 

5. But the authority of Cicero presses our author the 
most closely, and accordingly he makes great efforts to 
escape from it. After showing some circumstances, rather 
of expression than any thing else, in his philosophical 
treatises, he cites the oration Pro Cluentio, where, speak* 



189 

ing of the vulgar superstition, he says it is generally disbe- 
lieved, and then asks, '* Quid aliud mors eripuit praeter sen- 
sum doloris ?" But this at best is a rhetorical flourish ; and 
being delivered in public (though before the judges) never 
could be seriously meant as an esoteric attack on the doc- 
trine. The doctrines in the Be Officiis relate only to the 
Deity's being incapable of anger or malevolence, on which 
account he praises Regulus the more for keeping his oath 
when all philosophers knew nee irasci Deumnec nocere; 
which shows, according to our author, that Cicero could 
not believe in future retribution. But this is said by Cicero 
only in reference to immediate punishments, or judgments, 
as the vulgar term them. At any rate, the passage is quite 
capable of this sense, and every rule of sound construction 
binds us to prefer it as consistent with the other passages 
on a future state, while those passages will bear no mean- 
ing but one. We may here observe, in passing, the gra- 
tuitous manner in which works are held esoteric and exo- 
teric, just as suits the purposes of the argument. The 
Offices contain the above passage, and therefore. Bishop 
Warburton says it is the work which *' bids the fairest of 
any to be spoken from the heart." The passage in the 
Somnium Scipionis, " Omnibus quipatriam conservarint, 
adjuverint, auxerint, certum esse in ccelo, ad definitum 
locum ubi beati sevo sempiterno fruantur," (Som. Scip. 
37,) is got rid of, by saying that the ancients believed 
souls to be either human, or heroic and demonic, and that 
the two last went to heaven to enjoy eternal happiness, 
but that the former, comprehending the bulk of mankind, 
did not ? This is begging the question to no purpose, for 
it is also giving up the point, and at the utmost only re- 
duces the author's position to a denial that the ancients 
believed in the immortality of all souls. It must, how- 
ever, be observed, that unless he is allowed to assume 
also something like election and predestination, he gains 
hardly even this in his argument ; for if a man by patriotic 
conduct can become one of the heroic souls, and so gain 
eternal life, what more distinct admission can be desired 
of a future state of retribution ? That the doctrine of im- 
mortality was, by many at least, conferred in some such 
way, may be true. The beautiful passage in Tacitus seems 
to point that way, " Si non cum corpore extinguuntur 



190 

magnae animae." — {Vit. Ag. sub. Jin.) The main proof, 
however, against Cicero's belief is drawn from the Epis- 
tles, where alone, says our author, we can be sure of his 
speaking his real sentiments. Yet never did proof more 
completely fail. Writing to Torquatus, he says, " Nee 
enim dum ero, angar ulla re, cum omni vacem culpa — et 
si non ero sensu omnino carebo," (Lib. vi. Ep. 31.); — 
and to Toranius, '* Ima ratio videtur, ferre moderate, pree- 
sertim cum omnium rerum mors sit extremum," (Lib. vi. 
Ep. 21.) And this, which really means nothing more 
than a common remark on death ending all our pains and 
troubles, the learned author calls "professing his disbe- 
lief in a future state of retribution in the frankest manner." 
— Div, Leg. iii. 3. 

It seems, therefore, not too much to say that the Divine 
Legation does not more completely fail in proving the 
grand paradox which forms the main object of the argu- 
ment, and which has been parodied by Soame Jenyns, in 
his rnost injudicious defence of Christianity, than it does 
in supporting the minor paradox which is taken up inci- 
dentally as to the real opinions of the ancients, and which, 
it must be admitted, is indeed quite unnecessary to the 
general argument, and as little damages it by its entire 
failure, as it could help it by the most entire success. 



Note X. — Section VL 

A LEARNED and valuable work upon the life of Lord 
Bacon is prepared for publication by Mr. B. Montague, 
and will soon be before the world. Some very important 
facts are proved satisfactorily by the ingenious author, 
and show how much the criminality of this great man is 
exaggerated in the common accounts of his fall. But it is 
clearly shown, that he was prevailed upon by the intrigues 
of James L and his profligate minister to abandon his own 
defence, and sacrifice himself to their base and crooked 
policy — a defence which disgraces them more than it vin- 
dicates him. One thing, however, is undeniable, that 
they who so loudly blame Bacon, overlook the mean- 
ness of almost all the great statesmen of those courtly 
times. 



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